Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Opposition Leader, Honourable Dr Godwin Friday, has scheduled a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee.
At a recent Press Conference, Dr Friday announced the meeting: He said, “We have scheduled a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee, which is set up under Section 76 of the Constitution. The function of the committee is to look at the public accounts and to report back to the parliament. This will be on Thursday 26th June, 2025.
As the Chairman of the committee and Leader of the Opposition, I have invited three witnesses to be present at that meeting: the Director of Audit, the Accountant General and the Budget Director to be present there. And the meeting convenes at 10 O’clock in the chamber of the parliament building. The temporary parliament building, it’s open to the public and I know that there’s great public interest in it.
That’s the way I wish to see it conducted and we look forward. I want people to understand this, that the work of the Public Accounts Committee is not an investigative body. It is not there looking to point fingers here and there. It is there to look at the public accounts which were produced. And this is the first in a number of years we have called a meeting. People have been critical. That has basically been the hypocrisy that was coming from the government side. Oh, you haven’t brought the Public Accounts Committee to meet in so much time.
The principal document that the Public Accounts Committee considers is the report of the Director of the Audit for the public accounts of the country. These reports have been seven, eight years behind. This is the first time in the history of this government that we have had reports of the Public Accounts Committee that are dealing with the life of the present government. So, we have a report for 2021. We have one for 2022. And so those are the reports that we are going to consider in the meeting at the Public Accounts Committee. They are relevant and they may address matters that are current that people can still remember. What exactly the questions we asked previously in parliament or in Budget debates that we are following up at this session. So, I’m looking forward to that.
As I said, we have invited the Director of Audit, the Accountant General and the Budget Director to be present there. In other jurisdiction, The Accountant General and the Director of Audit work very closely with the committee. I am the chairman. We are not the majority. We are very much a minority in the committee. I think it’s important to be able to make that distinction.
No rules have been introduced
In fact, if you go back to the Hansard, I can’t remember the exact date, but it might have been 2004, where Prime Minister Gonsalves, as Minister of Finance at the time, said that there were going to be three important pieces of financial legislations coming to the parliament. One was the Audit Act, which was introduced and passed. The other was the Finance Administration Act, which was introduced and passed. And he said there was going to be legislation or regulations dealing with the Public Accounts Committee because essentially what was there was not satisfactory. Nothing has been done since then. When we had the meeting that Mr. Eustace, the Leader of the Opposition, tried to convene. It was terminated because the government side, which has a majority, said that we didn’t have proper rules on which to proceed.
Then the hypocritical thing, oh, you’re not calling the Public Accounts Committee. But we made a lot of representation publicly about it and I did in the parliament as well. And last year, the Speaker of the House put in writing what she had said in the parliament before. That is to say, as far as she’s concerned, there are no obstacles to the operation of the Public Accounts Committee. So, I said that I am taking her at her word that we are going to proceed on that basis.
More than that, we have been complaining in the past about the lateness of the preparation of the report of the Director of Audit. To have to consider an Audit Report that is eight years old, you’re talking about a government that has been passed maybe two governments ago. So currently we have Audit Reports that are in the life of this present government. So, we have the two things converging. That is to say that the speaker has told me in writing and in the parliament that the committee will function as other committees and other select committees within the parliament will function.
I have written to her indicating my intention to call the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee for Thursday. I provided an agenda which they have notified the members of the committee, and that has been circulated. But, I’m not naive either to know that this is a government that has essentially been providing obstruction every single step of the way in terms of our way of functioning in the parliament. Take for example, the most fundamental of all. We brought a Motion of No Confidence, in the parliament, properly presented to the parliament, signed by the number of persons required. When presented to the parliament and the Speaker now starts to debate it, the Prime Minister at the time and the government side all argued that the Opposition cannot bring a Motion of No Confidence unless the government agrees with it. And this, I mean, it seems ludicrous. And this was accepted as the decision of the parliament. We could not bring a motion of no confidence.”