An opposition MP told Parliament on Wednesday that the criteria for a tender to print the security stickers affixed to liquor bottles had been altered to favour an official attached to the Presidential Secretariat.

Chamara Sampath Dassanayake said the tender is “worth millions of rupees,” and that one of its criteria appeared to favour companies facing investigation by the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) — alleging the changes were made to serve vested interests, the Daily Mirror reported at 8.28 p.m.

These are allegations made under parliamentary privilege. No evidence is reported as having been tabled, no official is named, no company is named, and no tender reference is given. Nothing here is a finding.

Why the criterion claim is the substantive one

Most of what the MP said is assertion. One part of it is a specific, checkable claim about a document.

The allegation is not that a corrupt firm won, but that the eligibility criteria themselves were written so that companies under CIABOC investigation would qualify. Procurement criteria are ordinarily drafted to exclude such bidders; a criterion that admits them is an unusual thing to write by accident, and unlike a claim about intent it exists on paper and could be produced.

The MP did not say which criterion, in what tender round, or by whom it was changed. Those are the details that would make the claim testable, and none was reported.

The context the MP was speaking from

Dassanayake made the allegation while also complaining about selective enforcement — and his own position is part of the story.

“MP Namal Rajapaksa, myself and others are held in prison, while those allegedly involved in scams are allowed to move freely,” he said.

He is therefore an MP in custody alleging that others are not being pursued. That does not make the allegation false, but a reader is entitled to know the position from which it was made, and the Daily Mirror’s report supplies it in his own words.

He also asked why no action had been taken against Minister Kumara Jayakody over allegations relating to the procurement of substandard coal, and referred to another minister who he claimed had attempted to acquire a house in Dehiwala.

The coal reference connects to a live thread this desk has been covering: the Rs 18.3 billion loss alleged over inferior coal, and the reported effects of inferior coal at Madugoda. Those are reported allegations and an ongoing dispute, not established findings against any minister.

The pawned-jewellery complaint

Dassanayake’s final point was unrelated to procurement and may matter to more people than the tender.

He criticised a Central Bank move concerning the repayment of pawning loans, claiming private banks had been instructed not to allow borrowers to repay such loans in instalments, requiring the full amount to be settled in a single payment.

“This is unfair because poor people in this country pawn their jewellery simply to survive,” he said.

If accurate, that is a change in the terms on which a widely used form of small-scale credit can be redeemed. The Daily Mirror does not report any Central Bank response, cite a circular or direction, or confirm that such an instruction was issued. It is recorded here as the MP’s claim only.

This is not the first liquor-sticker tender dispute

The security stickers on liquor bottles have been contested before. This desk has previously reported the COPF examination of the liquor sticker tender and a related COPF review of digital security stamps and tax revenue.

Whether Wednesday’s allegation concerns the same tender round as those earlier proceedings is not stated in the Daily Mirror’s report, and this desk is not assuming it does. The stickers are a recurring procurement with a direct bearing on excise revenue collection, which is why they recur in Parliament.

Not reported

The report does not name the Presidential Secretariat official, identify the tender or its value beyond “millions of rupees,” say when the criteria were changed or what they previously required, or name any bidder.

It does not report a government response to any of the allegations — on the tender, on Minister Jayakody, on the unnamed minister and the Dehiwala house, or on the pawning-loan instruction. It does not say whether the matter has been referred to CIABOC, the Auditor-General or a parliamentary committee, or whether the procurement has been paused.

On sourcing. This is a single-source report. Parliamentary allegations by opposition MPs are frequently carried by only one outlet on the day; no other verified newsroom had filed on these remarks at the time of writing, about two hours after the Daily Mirror, and Ada Derana remains unreachable from this desk.

Source: Daily Mirror.