RANIL WICKREMESINGHE AND MAHINDA WIJESEKERA TO FIGHT FOR THE RIGHTS OF THE MONKS OF JATHIKA HELA URUMAYA
By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles
May 01, 10.00 AM:Both former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and the controversial Minister in Ranil Wickremesinghe’s former government Mahinda Wijesekera have come to the defense of the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), the political party of the Buddhist monks in parliament, the BBC’s Sinhala service Sandeshaya, announced.
There were allegations that JHU’ s election campaign was financed by sources close to the United National Party (UNP) but the allegations have been denied earlier.
Mahinda Wijesekera, against whom serious corruption charges have been raised by the media and whose record shows several times he had threatened journalists in the past, in a Sandeshaya interview faulted government owned media for publishing one sided reports to berate the Buddhist monks of the JHU .
He when asked whether they were taking up the issue of the JHU Buddhist monks for their own political advantage, admitted all politicians took up all issues for their own political advantage. But he said even on the outlook these media reports had a very heavy bias against the JHU monks. He said the JHU itself was coming forward to oppose this unjustifiable bias
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe through his media unit controlled all media unofficially and even those media men walked into news rooms of newspaper offices, stopped presses, and removed news items disadvantageous to the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe . A statement once issued by the Venerable Maha Nayaka of Malwatte was removed from the Sunday Island newspaper of Colombo.
br>The Sandeshaya said, the former Prime Minister and present Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe would take up the matter of biased reports published against the JHU monks by the government owned media. The report also said he would also take up the issue of the violation of the Parliamentary privileges of the JHU monks .His uncle, the late J. R. Jayewardene, brought journalists before the parliament, exercising the parliament’s never used judiciary powers ,in order to muzzle the press and accused the journalists of breaching parliamentary privileges, unlike in any other parliamentary democracy in the world
Mahinda Wijesekera, speaking on behalf of his leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said the JHU should not be attacked since two of them voted for the UNP candidate to nullify the two kidnapped from the JHU. But the two monks, Venerable Aparekke Pannananda Chief Sangha Nayaka of Southern Sri Lanka and Venerable Kathaluwe Rathanaseeha have said ,several times, that they were never kidnapped by anybody and only having differences of opinion with the other JHU monks. They claimed they represented the original view of the JHU not to join, under whatever circumstances, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) backed politicians and all other policies declared by the party originally.
Mahinda Wijesekera denied that during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s regime the government controlled media published biased reports for the government. A senior journalist of the country, Lucian Rajakarunanayaka accused Mahinda Wijesekera of threatening him for some thing he had published. Other newspapers openly accused him of engaging himself in bribery and corruption. Informed sources said he was one of the cabinet ministers, who had the worst number of bribery and corruption charges, against whom Ranil Wickremesinghe refused to investigate
Reginald Cooray, the media minister of the UPFA government taking part in the same program said Ranil Wickremesinghe government who were working so closely with the separatists did not have any moral right to speak on behalf of the JHU. By doing that he had done the greatest insult to the monk’s party, he said. He denied the government media was publishing bias reports.
