‘Kick Hakeem out’: BBS tells President

Wednesday, 16 July 2014 00:03 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

BBS slams President for allowing ministers to insult monks who swept him to power
Gnanasara Thero says Muslims ‘enacting drama’ about ‘fake’ incident in Aluthgama
Claims Hakeem uses portfolio to attack Buddhist monks

By Dharisha Bastians The hardline Bodu Bala Sena Organisation yesterday slammed President Mahinda Rajapaksa for permitting his own Cabinet ministers to insult Buddhist monks and the Buddhist people who swept him into power. The remarks follow statements made by Justice Minister and Leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress Rauff Hakeem to foreign correspondents in Colombo last week.

The Group’s controversial General Secretary Galagodaththe Gnanasara told a media briefing in Colombo yesterday that Minister Hakeem was ‘stripping’ the Sinhala Buddhist nation in the eyes of the world by calling for an end to Buddhist extremism in Sri Lanka. “If I was his leader, I would drag him by his ears and kick him out. Why is the President still counting his fingers?” Gnanasara Thero stormed. The monk said President Rajapaksa should be ashamed to continue to keep such Ministers in his cabinet. “Look at the drama the Muslims in Sri Lanka are enacting using a fake incident,” Gnansara Thero claimed, referring to the recent religious riots in Aluthgama. He claimed that the Muslims had brought religious separatism and extremism to Sri Lanka with their ‘Oluvil Declaration’ in 2003, which was not unlike the TULF’s Vaddukodai resolution in 1976. “If this Government has any shame, it will expel Hakeem from the Cabinet,” Gnanasara Thero charged. Referring to the Justice Minister as a ‘political prostitute’, the BBS General Secretary said Rauff Hakeem would leave the Government at the right time anyway. He charged that the SLMC had not supported the UPFA at key elections in 2005 or 2010. Bodu Bala Sena CEO and layman Dilantha Withanage told journalists that Hakeem was instrumental in misleading the international community with his statements about Buddhist extremist groups operating in Sri Lanka. According to the BBS CEO, when Minister Hakeem claims that there was no political will to enforce law and order, he was effectively telling the international community that the President had no will to enforce the law. “Hakeem is using his portfolio as Justice Minister to attack these innocent Buddhist priests,” Withanage asserted. “He is using his ministerial portfolio to attack Sinhala Buddhists,” he added. The country does not need a Justice Minister who only serves the Muslim people of Sri Lanka, Withanage charged. “Hakeem is the person who started ethno-religious hatred in this country,” the BBS CEO said. The BBS stands by its claim that there were armed Muslim extremists operating in the country, irrespective of which official denied their existence, he added.