The six-day march demanding Ven. Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera’s release ended on Thursday evening not with a handover but with a sit-in, after two rounds of talks with senior officials of the President’s Office produced no agreement and the monks said they would stay outside the Presidential Secretariat until dawn.

By 9.25 p.m. police were moving to take down the tent they had pitched.

The evening, in sequence

The Nidahase Pada Yathra reached the front of the Presidential Secretariat in the late afternoon under heavy security, and the monks leading it began a pirith chanting on the pavement, Hiru News reported. Hiru’s reporters put the number of monks who walked in the march at more than 3,000, under the slogan “Free Gnanasara Thera — do not touch the robe.” It was the sixth and final stage of the walk, from Kadawatha into Colombo.

Two officials then came out of the Secretariat to meet them. They asked for a month to deal with the demand. The monks protested and asked for a week. The officials left, Hiru reports, still asking for a month.

Separately, the Daily Mirror reported that Presidential Secretary Dr. Nandika Sanath Kumanayake met the monks and was unable to give a definitive answer. The monks had sat down on the road in protest after he initially did not come out to them. They told him they knew he had already discussed the matter with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and pressed for a timeframe.

At about 7.40 p.m., by Hiru’s account, the President’s Chief of Staff, Prabhath Chandrakeerthi, arrived. Those discussions also ended without agreement.

“Neither the President nor I can say how long. It is not a long period. The request has to be dealt with according to the law of the country — there is a legal process. The presidential pardon is in accordance with the Constitution. The legal process has to be followed properly.”

That is the Chief of Staff as quoted by Hiru, translated here from Sinhala. He does not make clear whether “the presidential pardon is in accordance with the Constitution” refers to the pardon power in general or to the 2019 pardon specifically — a distinction that matters, because the Supreme Court has already ruled on the second.

When the talks failed the monks said they would not leave, pitched tents, and announced they would hold a pirith chanting on the spot until morning.

What is actually being asked for

The Daily Mirror is the only outlet that states the demand precisely, and it is narrower than “release”. The monks asked the government to rectify an alleged technical flaw in the pardon granted to Gnanasara Thera by former president Maithripala Sirisena.

The archive complicates that framing. The Supreme Court did not find a technical defect in the 2019 pardon on 10 September — it struck the pardon down as arbitrary and invalid, after which the Court of Appeal ordered the balance of the six-year contempt sentence to run and the monk returned to Welikada on 5 October. Gnanasara Thera’s own position, stated on 20 September, was not that the court was wrong but that officials had erred — “if officials made a mistake in the procedure, why am I being punished?” — and he asked senior monks to seek a fresh pardon from President Dissanayake rather than a repair of the old one. This desk noted at the time the difficulty nobody has yet answered: a pardon granted to cure a flawed pardon would face the same scrutiny that voided the first.

Sirisena himself said on 14 October that he granted the pardon in line with his constitutional powers. The Supreme Court held that he did not.

Two accounts of the tent

The two newsrooms do not describe the same incident the same way.

The Daily Mirror says tensions erupted when the monks and other protesters attempted to put up a temporary tent and authorities intervened to prevent the structure going up, with a heated exchange between monks and police. Hiru says the tents were pitched and the camp set up during the evening, and that the confrontation came later, when police moved to remove the tent already standing.

Both agree on the outcome: the monks say they are not leaving until the government makes a positive announcement on Gnanasara Thera’s release.

One dating point is worth recording. The Daily Mirror’s 7.26 p.m. filing says the march reached the Secretariat “yesterday evening.” It did not. The walk was at Kadawatha on Wednesday evening and covered the final stretch into Colombo on Thursday, which is what Hiru, the Traffic Division’s congestion notice and this desk’s own reporting all record. The Daily Mirror’s own 9.25 p.m. filing describes the confrontation as current.

Not reported

No filing says what the government would do with the month it asked for, or what process the Chief of Staff means when he refers to a legal process — whether a fresh pardon is under consideration, whether the Attorney General has been consulted, or whether anything is before a court. Neither outlet reports who the two officials were who made the first approach, or how the Presidential Secretary’s meeting relates in time to the Chief of Staff’s.

Nothing is reported about whether police obtained or sought a court order over the tent, or how many officers were deployed. No figure is given for the number of people at the Secretariat as distinct from the 3,000-plus Hiru counts on the march itself, and no outlet reports whether the monks remained overnight as they said they would. (On arrests, and on what the tent was, see the update below — though both come second-hand.)

The crowd-size figure is attributed by Hiru to its own reporters, not to police or organisers, and no second estimate exists to check it against. Ada Derana has been unreachable from this desk for twenty-seven consecutive days, and no NewsFirst, Daily FT, Island or Colombo Gazette report on the Secretariat standoff could be found at the time of writing.

Update, 10.19 p.m.: the Opposition Leader intervenes, and says the structure sheltered a Buddha statue

Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa has called on President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to intervene personally in the protest, condemning the police action against the monks, the Daily Mirror reported at 10.19 p.m. — an hour after police moved on the tent.

In a statement, Premadasa said the monks had marched from Kandy to Colombo and were holding a peaceful protest near the Secretariat. He called the action against them undemocratic, urged the President to engage directly with the Maha Sangha to find a solution to their demands “while ensuring due respect for the Buddhist robe”, and called on the government and police to halt any action causing harassment or distress to the monks.

What the structure was — on his account

This is the first description anywhere of what the disputed tent was for. Premadasa said the temporary structure had been erected to provide shelter for a Buddha statue the monks had brought with them, and that its dismantling caused distress at the site.

If accurate, that materially changes the object of the confrontation described above. The two earlier filings have police preventing or removing a protest tent; this has them taking down a covering over a Buddha statue. Those are not the same act politically, and neither the Daily Mirror’s earlier report nor Hiru’s says which it was.

Two claims that arrive second-hand

Both of the new facts here are carefully hedged in the original, and that hedging should not be lost. Premadasa says he “received reports” that police dismantled the structure, and that he “received information” that several individuals were arrested. He does not say from whom, give a number, or name anyone detained.

So the question recorded above — whether anyone was arrested — is not closed. What exists is an allegation by the Opposition Leader, not a confirmation. No police statement, no court record and no independent account from any other newsroom supports it at the time of writing, and no outlet has reported the police version of either event.

The route is not in dispute

Premadasa’s “from Kandy to Colombo” and the Kadawatha framing used above describe the same walk at different scales. The campaign set out from the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy on 10 October and covered six daily stages down the Kandy road; Kadawatha into Colombo was the last of them, on Thursday. Both statements are correct.

Why an opposition intervention matters here

Who stands behind this campaign has been contested for days. The Police Traffic Division’s congestion notice described Thursday’s march as organised by “a group that includes several opposition political parties”, while Hiru, the Daily Mirror and this desk’s reporting all attribute it to the Maha Sangha, with a monk as the only named organiser. Separately, Udaya Gammanpila and two other opposition leaders alleged on 12 October that Gnanasara Thera’s robes were removed under NPP pressure.

Premadasa’s statement is the clearest public alignment yet between the parliamentary opposition and the campaign. It does not retrospectively establish that opposition parties organised the march — a statement issued on Thursday night says nothing about who arranged a walk that began the previous Saturday — and it should not be read as settling that dispute. It does mean the demand has now been taken up by the Leader of the Opposition, which is a change in the standing of the protest rather than evidence about its origins.

Still unreported: any response from the President’s office or the police to Premadasa’s statement, and whether any other opposition leader has made a similar call.

Sources: Hiru News 494355, 494375, 494382 and 494387 (Sinhala); Daily Mirror 352613, 352621 and 352622.