‘Priests’ in politics and freedom of religion

Wijedasa Rajapakse MP, front-bencher of the United National Party (UNP) and President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL), is bringing before Parliament a radical private member’s bill, which is intended to deny priests of any religion the right to sit in the legislature.

The bill, which has the assent of Opposition leader and UNP supremo Ranil Wickremesinghe, calls for the amendment of Article 91 of the constitution by the addition, as Article 91 (H), of the words ‘Priest of any religion’.

Article 91 is intended to prevent members representing more than one constituency and to prevent conflict of interest (both pecuniary and non-pecuniary) and to ensure the division of powers.

At present it disallows from being elected as a Member of Parliament or to sit and vote in Parliament the President, judges, the Ombudsman, the Parliamentary staff, higher public servants, including Public Service Commissioners, the Elections Commissioner and the Auditor General, higher staff of public corporations, and military and Police officers. Also banned from legislative office are bankrupts, those with interests in contracts with state bodies and those who are convicted of bribery.

Rajapakse says that he has brought this motion, for what he thinks should be called the ‘19th Amendment’, in order to further the maintenance and preservation of religious dignity and holiness of all faiths. He is also of opinion that the practice of political parties fielding clergy in elections was detrimental to national unity and reconciliation.

Buddhist monks

He had apparently been prompted to this action on hearing a speech made on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Ven Maduluwawe Sobitha Thera by Prof. Sarath Wijesuriya, of the Sinhala Department of Colombo University, attacking ferociously the role of monks in national issues and emphasising the necessity of keeping them out of politics.

This motion is likely to be opposed by the nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), which has the Buddhist prelate Ven. Atureliye Rathana thera in its parliamentary group. The party’s national organiser, Nishantha Sri Warnasinghe, said that parties had the right to field candidates of their choice and that his party would fight to defend the privilege of fielding Buddhist monks at future elections.

Also likely vociferously to oppose the motion on principle are the Marxist partners of the JHU in the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance. The Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) was previously represented in Parliament by Buddhist prelate Ven. Baddegama Samitha Thera, who is currently a member of the party’s group in the Southern Provincial Council.

They are likely to argue that the motion brings into question the fundamentally secular nature of the constitution. The constitution enshrines the right of all persons to their religious beliefs.

The proposed amendment would have the effect of denying members of a section the public from exercising their democratic right to seek election to the legislature. This would be unconstitutional, since Article 10 of the constitution guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion, while Article 14 guarantees the right of worship and religious teaching.

Lay followers

Another problem which manifests itself is the definition of ‘Priest’. The Oxford English Dictionary has a fairly copious definition, embracing a range of meanings - all having the sense of ‘ordained’. In the context of Sri Lanka, the meaning in the sense of ‘member of the clergy’ would have to be adopted.

Even religions with identified ordained clergy, such as Buddhism, have intermediate categories; for example Anagarikas, people who have given up their worldly life and are halfway between monks and lay followers. Some Protestant Christian churches have un-ordained ministers who have ‘accepted the calling’.

This could lead to discrimination between faiths; the refusal to allow the candidature of a Roman Catholic padre while allowing that of a preacher in a Christian Congregational church, for example, could be deemed inequitable. Where does one draw the line between the laity and the clergy?

Another, not-so-obvious ramification could be the weakening of the separation between ‘church’ and ‘state’. The identification of members of the clergy with the other categories mentioned in Article 91 would tend to reinforce the perception of religious bodies as being part and parcel of the state.

The issue of priests standing for election is a matter for the congregations themselves. If the ‘dayakas’ of a Buddhist monastery do not want a monk at their institution to contest, they are free to take steps to have the said monk expelled from the order.

Religious beliefs

It is not the job of the state in secular democracies to Police religious beliefs. Extensions of governmental interference into the personal beliefs of human beings should be resisted if we are to preserve an iota of the freedom of conscience.

It is patently evident that this matter has not been thought through. This motion does not appear to be a reasoned and sound attempt at enshrining within the constitution, provisions for the betterment of the populace.

It is blatantly obvious that, given the circumstances that Rajapakse has cited as the genesis of the motion, it is a partisan political measure which has been considered precisely and specifically in the context of the Buddhist clergy and the JHU.

The whole exercise appears to be an impromptu knee-jerk reaction to the hot-headed speech of an academic. It is not meet that the basis of the fundamental legislation of this nation should be of such a visceral nature.