Sri Lanka’s prime minister said yesterday Buddhism will remain paramount in the bitterly divided island, seeking to head off protests led by the powerful Buddhist clergy against proposed changes to the constitution.
The government announced plans last January to devolve power to provinces including in areas dominated by the country’s ethnic Tamil minority in an effort to address alienation and bury the kind of ethnic tension that led to a 26-year civil war
But Buddhists who make up 70% of Sri Lanka’s 21mn people are opposed to any changes in the constitution under which Buddhism is accorded foremost position while allowing people of other faiths to practice.
Sri Lanka has chosen only Buddhists to the post of president and prime minister since independence from British colonial rule in 1948. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the Buddhist character of the country would not be touched.
“We are in the process of preparing the new constitution... the president and myself have agreed to maintain the priority given to the Buddhism in the constitution as it is,” Wickremesinghe told a group of Buddhist monks in Colombo.
More than 75 prominent monks last week warned the government not to change the constitution or it would face consequences.
Radical monk Maagalkande Sudaththa had said hardline Buddhists were mobilising Sri Lankans from the majority Sinhalese ethnic group to resist a new power-sharing arrangement being drafted by the government.
“Monks are going from district to district to educate their followers about the dangers of the proposed constitution,” Sudaththa told reporters. Sudaththa is an ardent supporter of firebrand monk Galagodaatte Gnanasara, who is on bail after being accused of hate speech and stoking violence against Sri Lanka’s tiny Muslim population, the second largest 
minority after Tamils. 
The opposition, led by former president Mahinda Rajapakse, and hardline Buddhist groups have warned the government of nationwide demonstrations if the government went ahead with changes to the charter.
Some opposition members have alleged that the new constitution had been drafted to please Western nations and to dilute the influence of 
Buddhism.
More than 100,000 people were killed in the civil war that ended in 2009 in a crushing defeat for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fighting for a separate homeland for the Tamils.





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