A young Bahamian telephoned to ask why the Public Accounts Committee did not have the power to send for persons and papers and ask questions outside of information laid on the table of the House, especially as it is the most important of parliament’s standing committees. He pointed out that all of parliament’s other committees have this authority.
Down through the years, from the time that this committee was established in 1913 that practice has been that all information needed by the committee to scrutinise the public finances would be made available. The report and relevant documents were laid on the table of the House in a timely fashion so that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) could fulfill its statutory duty with an annual report.
The problem arose under the PLP when government failed to lay an up-to-date auditor’s report on the table of the House at he end of each fiscal year.
The problem, festering behind closed doors finally broke out into angry debate in the House in 1990 when members of the committee and the Opposition accused government of making it impossible for the PAC to perform its duty to the Bahamian people as the watchdog of the public purse.
“You want me to change the rules of the committee by giving the committee the power to go outside its terms of what has been given to it?” asked Attorney General Paul Adderley. This was the same Mr Adderley who three years earlier had ridiculed the PAC for not having met for five years. Mr Adderley, ﾠhaving thwarted Norman Solomon’s efforts as chairman of the PAC in 1974 to investigate loans to Bahamasair, should have known that the committee had shut down because government had made its work impossible.
“The committee believes,” replied Opposition leader Sir Cecil Wallace Whitfield in a House debate on the matter in February 1990, “that it has the power to go outside the accounts that have been laid on the table, and the principle reason which it can use to justify that is that you don’t put on the table everything you are supposed to put on the table.”
Today, history is repeating itself. Committee chairman Brent Symonette and his committee want to examine the current finances for the fiscal year 2004-2005, which are already past due. So far all government has laid on the table of the House are accounts four years out of date. Now on the table are the accounts for 2002-2003, which the auditor general only certified in July 2005 and which were delayed another year before being brought to parliament by government. To add insult to injury ﾠwhen they were eventually laid on the table there were only three copies of the report for a five-member committee.
Obviously government is not taking this committee seriously But of even more concern, it is mocking the Bahamian people. Parliament is about to start the 2006-2007 Budget debate, but the auditor-general cannot yet produce the 2004-2005 accounts. Without these accounts how does government know where it is headed? It really is playing “blind man’s buff” with the people’s finances.
In its first interim majority report, the PAC, which was appointed on December 2, 1974 under the chairmanship of Norman Solomon, recorded that it had met three times.
It said that at its request the auditor-general contacted the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Tourism, asking for permisson to obtain information from Mr Basil Sands, Bahamasair’s auditor. The auditor-general and Mr Sands met. At this meeting Mr Sands produced a financial report for Bahamasair for the year ending May 31, 1973. However, the meeting was suddenly interrupted by the Permanent Secretary who reported that he had been instructed by Attorney General Adderley to tell the auditor-general that he had to put his request for information in writing.
It was the auditor-general’s opinion, as it was the opinion of the committee, that there was no rule requiring the auditor-general to request information for the PAC in writing.
Nevertheless, following instructions, the auditor-general wrote to Mr Adderley to find out if it was necessary for him to put his request in writing. In answering this question, Mr Adderley added:
“It is therefore for consideration whether Bahamasair Holdings Limited comes within the meaning of the relevant words of Article 136(3) which are ‘all departments and officers of the government.’
“In my opinion,” wrote Mr Adderley, “Bahamasair Holdings Limited is not a department or office of the Government and therefore it is not the function of the auditor general to audit the accounts of that company.”
Books closed. However, the committee discovered among other things that within the first three months of 1975, $2.6 million was spent to keep Bahamasair flying.
The money originated with the First National City Bank. As of the date of their report, the PAC could find no authority for the PLP government to either borrow or spend this money. The poor auditor-general was sent on another wild goose chase to track down the permission. As far as is known that was the last report of the PAC until Mr Adderley drew it to members’ attention that the committee had not met between 1982 and 1985.
“If the Opposition ignores the most important standing committee which it controls, I have to draw to their attention that they are delinquent in that respect. That is the parliamentary watch dog of public expenditure,” said Mr Adderley.
Mr Adderley obviously thought these busy men had time to waste playing cat-and-mouse with government.
Editorial from The Tribune
Nassau, Bahamas
