Bodu Bala Sena general secretary Ven. Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera has called on senior Buddhist monks to ask President Anura Kumara Dissanayake for a fresh presidential pardon, eleven days after the Supreme Court invalidated the pardon he received in 2019.
He spoke at the launch of his book Navayay Paha Vikurthiya at the Sambuddhatva Jayanthi Mandiraya in Colombo on Sunday (20), Daily Mirror reported.
The argument
Gnanasara Thera’s case is not that the Supreme Court was wrong, but that the fault lies elsewhere.
“If officials made a mistake in the procedure, why am I being punished? The current President can correct any mistake made in the process followed by former President Maithripala Sirisena.”
That is a request for a new pardon properly granted, not a defence of the old one — an important distinction. The Supreme Court’s 10 September ruling held that the pardon Sirisena granted in 2019 was invalid, leaving open the question of how the remainder of his prison sentence for contempt of court is to be enforced.
He asked senior monks to intervene with the President so he could continue his religious activities, and said he would submit to the law:
“I don’t know how my fate has been written. This is not a time when I am afraid. Everyone has a responsibility to respect the laws of the country. I will bow to the law.”
He also spoke about his 87-year-old mother, saying he feared he might not see her again if imprisoned.
Rejecting the suggestion that he acts for politicians, he said: “We are not anyone’s followers. We are followers of the Buddha.” He said the proceedings against him originated under the former Yahapalana administration.
Where this sits in the sequence
The appeal follows a fortnight of movement in the case. After the Supreme Court ruling, prison officials reported him untraceable at his temple; he then appeared before the Colombo High Court in a separate matter.
He was at a public book launch in Colombo on Sunday, which establishes he is not in custody.
Not reported
Daily Mirror does not say whether the President’s Office has received or responded to any such request, whether senior monks have agreed to make it, or what his current legal status is — whether a warrant or committal order is outstanding following the Supreme Court’s ruling. It does not state how much of the contempt sentence remains to be served, or whether the Attorney General has moved to enforce it.
Nor does any account address the obvious question raised by the argument itself: a pardon granted to correct a flawed pardon would face the same scrutiny that voided the first.
