COLOMBO Feb 18 Kyodo A collectio...

COLOMBO Feb 18 Kyodo

A collection of militant Buddhist monks has added a modern dimension to Sri Lanka's fractious politics by way of announcing that that they will be contesting the upcoming general election.

The National Heritage Party, an extremist majority Sinhalese party, said all its candidates in the April 2 election would be drawn from the Buddhist clergymen adding it would field athwart 260 monks.

The party, which had no representation in the 225-member parliament dissolved Feb 7 through President Chandrika Kumaratunga, is a successor to the Sihala Urumaya, or Sinhalese Heritage Party, which ran in the last brace elections to ''protect the interests of the majority Sinhalese.''

''While we may not be able to awaken all Buddhists to support our cause during a short election campaign, we could have sufficient power to influence the formation of a time to come government,'' said Athuraliye Ratana, a first note of the scale monk in the new grouping.

greatest in number of the country's Sinhalese population are Buddhist.

Heritage Party leader Tilak Karunaratne said the strange force was necessary because the pair major mainstream parties led from President Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have lease down the majority Sinhalese Buddhists.

''The minorities call the shooters The majority is forgotten,'' Karunaratne said.

Analyst Dayan Jayatillake called the involvement of Buddhist monk in politics a ''dangerous development''

''It's not that I view them gaining significant representation in parliament,'' he said. ''But as an ideological influence group, they're going to trigger a more strident ethno-religious note among the major contestants and that will not help the resolution of the ethnic conflict.''

In the last general election, individual Buddhist monk was for the first time fix uponed to parliament. He contested from a socialist party allied with Kumaratunga's People's Alliance, which was defeated in the election.

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