The controversial appointment of General Secretary of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) Ven. Galagodaaththe Gnanasara Thera as the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force for One Country, One Law on 26 October, 2021, drew widespread condemnation.
The 13-member Task Force was tasked to prepare a report on the implementation of the much touted ‘One Country, One Law’ concept. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa disregarded strong disapproval expressed by the educated society in general against Ven. Gnanasara’s appointment though it may have received the backing of those with a Buddhist label, who are in the majority. President Rajapaksa conveniently failed to take into consideration that Ven. Gnanasara had been the recipient of a controversial presidential pardon on 23 May, 2019, from President Sirisena.
At the time Ven. Gnanasara received presidential pardon, he was serving a six-year term of rigorous imprisonment for contempt of court over his conduct at the Homagama Magistrate’s Court on 25 January, 2016, during hearings regarding media personality Prageeth Ekneligoda. The disappearance of Ekneligoda, on the eve of the 2010 January 26 presidential election, remains an unsolved case for law enforcers.
The monk’s verbal attack on Sandhya, wife of media personality Prageeth Ekneligoda, at the Homagama Magistrate’s Court, was considered as aligning with members of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DM) accused of being responsible for the media personality’s disappearance. So, what made President Rajapaksa make Ven. Gnanasara Chairman of a Task Force that dealt with the law of the country?
Senior Assistant Secretary to the President, Jeevanthie Senanayake, served as the Secretary to the Task Force.
By the time the Task Force handed over its final report—consisting of eight chapters and 43 recommendations—to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, on June 29, 2022, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP/Pohottuwa party) administration was in tatters. India and the US backed the clandestine violent political movement (Aragalaya) that brought the government down to its knees and the utterly divided Pohottuwa party simply couldn’t tackle the developing situation.
Like the Romesh de Silva, PC, report on the new Constitution, commissioned by President Rajapaksa and received during Aragalaya, Ven. Gnanasara’s report never received the attention of the government. By then, the Pohottuwa party had given up hope in tackling the challenge posed by Aragalaya, hence the decision to elect UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s successor, for the duration of what remained of the latter’s presidential term.
The ongoing controversy over disrobing of Ven. Gnanasara has to be discussed, taking into consideration the post-war political context in which the BBS was formed by Ven Gnanasara and Ven Kirama Wimalajothi, in early May, 2012, and the developments surrounding that organisation. Those who aligned with the BBS once served the interests of the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) is not a secret. Ven. Gnanasara, who unsuccessfully contested the Colombo District, on the JHU ticket, at the 2004 parliamentary polls, achieved unprecedented political clout as the BBS rapidly expanded in the 2012-2013 period. Gnanasara had the backing of war-winning President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government. The government allowed the BBS to go ahead with its strategy. Having held its first national convention, in late July, 2012, at the BMICH, Baudhaloka Mawatha, it called a protest outside the Bangladesh High Commission, in Colombo, in October, 2012, against what it called anti-Buddhist riots in that country.
Obviously, both the SLFP-led UPFA and the UNP felt they could take advantage of the BBS for their gain. Against the backdrop of the developments over the 2012-2021 period, the appointment of Ven. Gnanasara as the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force for One Country, One Law raised quite a number of eyebrows. How could a person who benefited as a direct intervention of President Sirisena, by way of an utterly controversial and unacceptable presidential pardon, was placed at the top of a Task Force that dealt with laws of the country?
A despicable practice
The executive unashamedly abused presidential pardons. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was no exception. In the run-up to Ven. Gnanasara’s appointment as head of ‘One Country, One Law’ Task Force, President Rajapaksa pardoned Duminda Silva, who had been imprisoned under a death sentence. That presidential pardon came into effect on 24 June, 2021. The former parliamentarian, who switched his allegiance from the UNP to the UPFA during Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidency, received a presidential pardon, along with 92 others released to mark the Poson Full Moon Poya day that year.
Though yet to clearly know what happened during a fracas between Duminda Silva and Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra, both obviously under the influence of liquor during the local government election of 2011, in the Kolonnawa area, the former had been shot in the head and rushed to hospital with a bullet having passed right through the middle of his skull and he miraculously survived but as to whether all his faculties have been restored is unknown. He, too, is back in prison with his pardon removed. But what is certain is that in retaliation for shooting Duminda, by Bharatha, after being knocked down by the former during the fracas, Bharatha himself was shot dead by Duminda’s bodyguards soon, thereafter.
Silva was jailed in September 2016 after the Colombo High Court found him, and several others, guilty of the murder of former MP Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra in early October 2011. Three of Premachandra’s bodyguards were also killed in the shootout between two UPFA gangs, led by Premachandra and Silva, a sitting ruling party lawmaker at that time. Premachandra as presidential advisor on trade union matters, operated out of Temple Trees. What many really failed to realise, at that time, was that the shootout occurred between two groups of Rajapaksa loyalists and both parties received government patronage at the highest level. In spite of the police knowing armed groups were roaming, while voting on the local government election was underway, they did nothing, for obvious reasons.
Although presidential pardons granted to those convicted of minor offences, to coincide with Vesak, Poson, Christmas and the national Independence Day, cannot be challenged, the despicable practice of high profile convicts receiving privilege status undermined the rule of law. That is the undeniable truth as is the practice in the USA. Presidents and, in some instances, top prisons department management conspired to release high profile convicts by categorising them with ordinary prisoners.
Let me remind you of the shocking revelation of one such instance, less than a year after Anura Kumara Dissanayake won the presidency. The Cabinet of Ministers that met under the leadership of Dissanayake suspended Commissioner General of Prisons, Thushara Upuldeniya, in June last year, after the media revealed convicted financial fraudster Athula Thilakaratne was clandestinely included among 400 minor offenders released to mark Poson Full Moon Poya day.
Thilakaratne cannot be the first to secure his release in such a covert way. The Prisons Department must have arranged such secret operations over the years and the Justice Ministry, under successive governments, must have been aware of what was going on. The JVP-led NPP administration is the only regime to act swiftly and decisively when the media exposed the Prisons Department ruse.
But the incumbent government, too, turns a blind eye to serious wrongs committed by its own people or ensures that justice moves at a snail’s pace in such instances as in the case of releasing red flagged containers from the Colombo port, the coal scam, etc., while applying the full weight of available legal avenues against political opponents facing allegations, like the Rajapaksas, or their supporters, without even hearing their cases.
The other controversial presidential pardon, granted by Gotabaya Rajapaksa, happened in late March 2020, less than six months after his election as the President. The former Gajaba Regiment combat officer granted a presidential pardon to former Sri Lanka Army Staff Sergeant Sunil Ratnayaka, convicted for the December 2000 Mirusuvil massacre in Jaffna. The victims included three children. Altogether eight Tamil civilians were massacred. Ratnayaka was sentenced to death in June 2015 by a Colombo High Court Trial-at-Bar bench, a verdict unanimously affirmed by a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in April 2019. But, President Rajapaksa released him. The President’s action drew widespread condemnation with the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and Amnesty International leading the protests. Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu’s Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) challenged the President’s action.
Such unilateral action, regardless of the Supreme Court reaffirming the High Court Trial-at-Bar bench ruling, opened the country to international scrutiny. Unfortunately, Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government simply failed to examine catastrophic repercussions of such ill-conceived decisions. Instead of adhering to the laws of the land, the government caused the rapid deterioration of the system.
Gevindu Cumaratunga, Yuthukama leader and outspoken SLPP National List lawmaker, had been the only member of a 145-person government parliamentary group to oppose Ven. Gnanasara’s appointment. The top SLPP leadership reacted angrily to Cumaratunga’s stand on the BBS chief.
Sirisena’s folly
Just a week before the 16 November, 2019, presidential election, President Sirisena pardoned Jude Shramantha Jayamaha, sentenced to death for the 2005 murder of Swedish teenager Yvonne Jonsson at the Royal Park apartment complex in Rajagiriya.
Sirisena’s irresponsible and contemptible action caused public outrage. The presidential pardon granted to Jayamaha was even worse than the release of Ven. Gnanasara, as the latter was only found guilty of ridiculing Sandya Ekneligoda in a court house, thereby causing contempt of court.
The wholly unnecessary presidential intervention, on behalf of Jude, who is from an affluent background, should have been investigated by the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC). What really made Sirisena get involved with the Jayamaha family? Who was the go-between the President and the Jayamahas?
The SLFP leader caused himself immense harm. That mysterious presidential intervention cost him dearly in the eyes of the public.
A three-judge Supreme Court bench comprising Justices S. Thurairaja, Yasantha Kodagoda, and Janak de Silva, in June 2024, ruled that the pardon was arbitrary, unlawful, violated constitutional provisions, and breached the public trust doctrine. But, by then, Jayamaha had vanished, possibly from the country itself and so far government efforts to track him down have failed and he still remains at large. Perhaps, Jayamaha will never be apprehended abroad and brought back. Sirisena owes the country an explanation why he pardoned Jayamaha, just a week before the presidential election.
Interestingly, the SLPP brought Sirisena back to Parliament at the August 2020 general election. In fact, 13 SLFPers were elected on the SLPP ticket and later received recognition as the second largest party in the SLPP coalition. Sirisena not only released Ven. Gnanasara, on 23 May 2019, but invited the controversial Thera to his official residence the following day. Sirisena’s media team believed in taking advantage of the developments. They released a video of the President in conversation with Ven. Gnanasara and the Thera’s mother. Ven. Ulapane Sumangala, now at the forefront of protests in support of Ven. Gnanasara, was also present on that occasion. The presidential pardon granted to Ven. Gnanasara was depicted as Sirisena’s achievement and action taken on behalf of the Buddhists.
Perhaps people have now forgotten that Sirisena publicly alleged that Ven. Athuraliye Rathana relentlessly pushed him to release Jayamaha and was the beneficiary of that deal. Appearing on a private television channel, Sirisena, then an MP representing the SLPP, claimed that those who arranged the release received a massive amount of money. The writer sought Ven. Rathana’s response to Sirisena’s claim. Ven Rathana, at that time the sole lawmaker representing ‘Our Power of People Party’ (OPPP) denied Sirisena’s claim (Presidential pardon for Royal Park murderer: Ven. Rathana denies Sirisena’s accusations, lodges complaint with CID, The Island, 24 June 2022/ https://island.lk/presidential-pardon-for-royal-park-murderer-ven-rathana-denies-sirisenas-accusations-lodges-complaint-with-cid/).
It would be pertinent to mention the battle between Ven. Gnanasara and Ven, Rathana over the sole National List slot received at the 2020 August general election. OPPP suffered dearly when the Election Commission rejected the District nomination lists submitted by the new party. Among the lists rejected was OPPP Kurunegala list which included Ven. Gnanasara. Therefore, he couldn’t contest. But, the OPPP declared that Ven. Gnanasara would be appointed to Parliament through the National List. But, when the party ended up with just one National List, Ven. Rathana, in spite of being rejected by the Gampaha electorate, wanted to be their sole appointed MP. Ven. Rathana secured the seat though the Executive Committee of the party favoured Ven Gnanasara.
The two monks reached consensus on contesting the 2020 general election together as they couldn’t align themselves with major political parties. Obviously, OPPP failed to attract the attention of the majority Sinhala Buddhist community though, by then, the JHU was no longer in politics. Sirisena intervened on behalf of Ven. Gnanasara, in the run up to the 2019 presidential and 2020 parliamentary polls.
For the LTTE’s benefit
President JRJ granted presidential pardon to notorious criminal Sunil Perera, alias Gonawala Sunil, in July, 1981. That despicable act coincided with the 50th anniversary of Sri Lanka receiving universal franchise. The UNPer, who had been convicted of raping a 17-year-old school girl, walked free from the Welikada Prison and, thereafter, to add insult to injury, he received from the same UNP government, an appointment as an All Island Justice of Peace.
The then Education and Youth Affairs and Employment Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is alleged to have intervened on behalf of Gonawala Sunil. After Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga brought the UNP’s 17-year-old rule to an end in 1994, as I remember the Justice Ministry issued a statement regarding the presidential pardon granted to politically connected persons. The same list also dealt with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) members released by Ranasinghe Premadasa during the May 1989 to June 1990 period.
Among those LTTE terrorists was Manohari Daniels convicted for the 1987 November 9 car bomb blast, near the Maradana Railway Station. The deadly blast claimed the lives of nearly 30 people. Over 100 others suffered injuries. The LTTE wanted Premadasa to exercise his executive powers. On the orders of the President, terrorists were released quietly. Daniels, who had been serving a six-year term of RI, returned to Batticaloa.
Premadasa released LTTE terrorists, vacated Army camps, and provided them arms and funds to the tune of Rs 125 mn, during May 1989 to June 1990. Unfortunately, none of those demanding abolition of the executive presidency on the election platform never bothered to examine how successive presidents abused presidential pardon. Sirisena happened to be one of the worst offenders. He played politics with presidential pardon. At the completion of first year in office, on 8 January, 2016, Sirisena pardoned Sivaraja Jenivan, aka Sivarajah Jeneepan, or Mohommadu Sulthan Cader Mohideen, sentenced in 2015 to 10 years rigorous imprisonment by the Polonnaruwa High Court. The Polonnaruwa High Court found Jenivan guilty of planning to trigger a claymore mine attack, targeting Sirisena, in 2005. The ex-terrorist was released at a public ceremony to mark his first year in office. They shook hands on stage.
Sirisena later tweeted a photo of himself on stage with Jenivan, with a caption reading: “Ordered presidential pardon to a prisoner who was serving time for attempting to assassinate me in 2005.”
At the conclusion of the war, in May, 2009, President Mahinda Rajapaksa decided against initiating legal action in respect of approximately 12,000 LTTE cadres. Regardless of their status in the terrorist organisation, the war-winning government allowed all of them to be rehabilitated and released. Whatever the criticism directed at the government over post-war accountability issues, the rehabilitation project, implemented with the backing of the international community, received plaudits from the Tamil community.
Had the government launched investigations into those taken into custody in the closing stages of the war, hundreds would have faced prison terms. Even hardcore terrorists, including LTTE intelligence wing members, and, perhaps, a few suicide cadres, may have escaped punishment. The decision to integrate the entire lot to the society is a gesture that should have earned the gratitude of the Tamil community. Instead, the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), and others who served the LTTE’s despicable interests, wanted to haul Sri Lanka before an international war crimes tribunal.
The Justice and National Integration Ministry should undertake an examination of presidential pardons and set the record straight. Perhaps a lawmaker should seek a written response from the Justice Ministry. Although D.B. Wijetunga had been rarely targeted over abusing presidential pardons, like his predecessors, JRJ and Premadasa, he, too, released two convicts. The three UNP Presidents, during the 1978-1994 period, released altogether 72 high profile convicts.
Ranil Wickremesinghe came to the rescue of Ranjan Ramanayake soon after the conclusion of Aragalaya (March-July 2022). Ramanayake, who had been sentenced to a four-year term of rigorous imprisonment for contempt of court, was released by Wickremesinghe in August 2022.
Ramanayake drew the attention of the judiciary when he declared, outside Temple Trees, in 2017, that the vast majority of judges and lawyers were corrupt and worked for money. Addressing the media, in his capacity as State Minister, Ramanayake said that 95% of judges and lawyers protected murders, corrupt elements and drug dealers. Sri Lanka never really made an attempt to prevent presidents and their henchmen from manipulating the law of the land. The President holds the power to grant a presidential pardon, or clemency, to individuals convicted by courts. Under Article 34, the President can grant a free pardon or a conditional pardon, put off sentences, substitute a lighter punishment, or remit all or part of a sentence or court penalty. The presidential pardon has become a tool in the hands of presidents who acted as if they held eternal power, thereby making a mockery of the law. The continuation of abusing presidential pardon, in a way subvert the rule of law. Such actions erode public confidence in the judiciary and have a detrimental impact on the Attorney General’s Department, as well as law enforcement.
Amidst the decision to introduce new prison regulations for monks serving jail terms, to appease the Maha Sangha, up in arms over producing Ven Gnanasara in court in civilian attire, the government has conveniently failed to declare its position on the presidential pardon. Let the public know of the recommendations made by retired Supreme Court Judge S. Thurairaja, on 10 July, 2026, regarding a systematic, fair, and transparent mechanism for granting presidential pardons in Sri Lanka. Thurairaja proposed the establishment of a clear, structured framework for granting presidential pardons under Article 34(1) of the Constitution, replacing ad-hoc or discretionary decisions. The bottom line is that as long as the executive presidency remains, presidential pardon will be abused as we have experienced over the past few decades.
