‘75m gold’ MP Raheem’s tit for tat revenge vote to spite Government

Sabri wages retaliatory strike against Ranil for not coming to his rescue

Puttalam MP Sabri Raheem who was arrested by Customs officials on Tuesday for attempting to smuggle 3.5 kilos of gold bars, was back in Parliament on Wednesday to nonchalantly attend to the business of the House as if nothing untoward had happened to him the previous day when he had arrived at the airport from Dubai.

Not that MP Ali Sabri Raheem, 60, of the All Ceylon Makkal Congress had to mention his airport mishap to anyone. The news of him being caught red-handed by Customs officials, trying to pass Katunayake Airport’s ‘special guest cabin facilities’ with an undeclared haul of gold bars – valued by Customs at Rs. 75 million - was already well known. He had been fined Rs 7.5 million and later released.

What was not that well known was what he told journalists the day after his foiled gold smuggling bid. He said the gold did not belong to him.

‘The consignment belongs to a friend of mine and I was blamed for it at the end of the day,’ the MP told Daily Mirror journalists in Parliament.

Poor Sabri. No one told him -least of all his gold-owning friend -that it hardly mattered who owned the gold. That the offence was for carrying contraband gold through Customs undeclared. That the legal blame had fallen rightly and squarely on his shoulders as a result. Sixty years of age, and he -a Lankan lawmaker -- still doesn’t know that.

While the police are still investigating the matter, a probe should be launched to find out how many trips he had made to Dubai in recent times and -- if he had been a regular visitor -- why he had made Dubai, the mecca of his destinations?

So what was he doing in

Parliament on Wednesday when one would have expected him to have laid low till the heat had worn off? True, the Constitution only disqualifies an MP if he has been convicted of a criminal offence by a competent court, and Sabri faces no such bar since he has not been convicted yet. But why the indecent rush to take his seat on Wednesday itself ?

Was he driven by some irresistible urge to serve the interests of his people by attending Parliament to vote on the motion the government was presenting that day, the 24th of May? The day the Government had decreed that all its MPs must, by hook or crook, be present to secure the 113 votes necessary to remove the thorn in its flesh, the chief of the public consumer rights independent commission, Janaka Ratnayake who had continuously been against the Power Minister’s moves to raise electricity charges.

The final tally read: for the motion to remove him 123 votes:

against the motion 77.

It was, no doubt, a whopping victory for the Government. It had successfully removed a lone but powerful statutory voice of dissent from the landscape, and could now proceed without ado to raise tariffs as it wished.

Janaka Ratnayake who had said on Tuesday night, that ‘my gut feeling is that I won’t be removed by these MPs, as I have always stood with the people,’ said on Wednesday evening when he found himself ousted: ‘The politicians in this country make decisions according to their whims and fancies.’

He was not far off the mark even though his arrow did not quite fall for the reason he had meant it to fall.

It later emerged that Puttalam’s gold smuggling MP Sabri Raheem who had first entered parliament in 2020 from the All Ceylon Makkal Congress but had voted with the Government for Gotabaya’s 20th Amendment and had remained in

Government ranks ever since, had turned coat this time and voted against the Government.

Why the sudden change of heart? Did he fancy his chances at the next election will shine brighter if he struck a blow for the people after queering his pitch on Tuesday in the gold fiasco at BIA? With all the arrogance of a national list MP, it seems he didn’t give a fig for the people’s interests.

The motivating factor for his anti-government vote had been his grouse that neither Ranil nor Dinesh had facilitated for him a smooth exit from the airport nor given him a get-out-of-jail-free card. It was payback time for the revengeful Goldfinger. For him, it was no dish best eaten cold but to be feasted hot, at once.

Instead of sharpening his knives of hate, he should be counting his blessings that he was handled with kid gloves and was lucky enough to be fined only a tuppence of the 75 million buck value of the contraband gold; and walk out a free man.

But such is the debauched political culture of our times that it has emboldened this gold-smuggling MP to use his parliamentary vote to settle personal scores and, thereafter, to have the brazen impudence to trumpet his spite from Diyawanna’s ramparts.

As the Daily Mirror reported on Wednesday, he had told journalists in Parliament, ‘I decided to vote against the motion to remove Public Utilities Commission Chairman Janaka Ratnayake from his post as both President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena did not come to my rescue when I was faced with a difficulty.’

Pretty much sums up, doesn’t it, the state of Lanka’s Parliament? How the nation’s MPs place their own interest above all else and don’t give a tosh who knows it.