The Tribune

FOR THE first time this year, we tuned in to the Parliamentary Channel and gave up Monday morning to listen to the time wasting political chatter. Education Minister Jerome Fitzgerald seemed delighted that his Ministry will receive an extra $8m in this year’s budget — taking Education’s allocation from $175m to $183m.

With $8m extra, Mr Fitzgerald seemed to anticipate great educational results. However, the Bahamas will end the financial year with the usual D average, unless this $8m is spent wisely in areas where it is most needed. A paper trail should be kept on all allocations made from the Public Treasury to the various ministries, which means that the Auditor General’s department has to be given the staff to do the auditing job required of it.

Parliament’s interference with the work of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) — a committee given power to protect the people’s finances — has to stop. The idea, as suggested earlier in this session, that before the auditor submits his report to the House it has to be first scrutinised by the prime minister, minister of works, or the head of whatever committee is being investigated is almost obscene. If the Auditor’s department is to be so neutered by interested parties, it might as well be closed and the Treasury saved the extra expense. The auditor cannot be independent if he has to submit his report to the heads of the very government departments he is auditing.

The critics can say what they like about the former UBP government, but as a young parliamentary reporter it was under that administration that we learned the importance of this much respected committee. A committee that had the power “to call for persons and papers and meet from place to place”. And under the UBP they did meet and they regularly reported. It was only when the PLP entered the picture that the very existence of this committee was under question and its functioning made difficult, if not impossible.

As we mentioned in an earlier column, there was a period when the PAC did not meet at all — members had no reason to meet because the House refused to lay the Auditor’s report on the table for PAC members to study. Although an annual report to the House is mandatory, there was no report from that committee for five years. In 1980, the late Paul Adderley, then Attorney General, who was fully aware of why the PAC could not carry out its statutory duties, tried to make political capital of its non-performance by deflecting the blame from the House to the committee.

“If the Opposition ignores the most important standing committee, which it controls,” said Mr Adderley, “I have to draw to their attention that they are delinquent in that respect. That is the parliamentary watchdog of public expenditure.”

Mr Adderley said the Opposition had no control over what government spent its money on, but “the how” was in the hands of the all powerful committee.

Even Mr Christie tried to pull an Adderley stunt after the BAMSI fire by boasting how when his government was in opposition it would embarrass the Hubert Ingraham government through the work of the PAC, which at that time, the Christie Opposition controlled.

“Mr Speaker, if they (the FNM) feel there are discrepancies (and) inaccuracies even fraudulent manifestations (at BAMSI) they have the power to send for persons and papers and they have the majority of the committee,” Mr Christie scoffed as he took a verbal jab at the Public Accounts Committee.

“It is that committee,” he bragged, “we used to expose one of the grandest displays of uncontrolled expenditure on the part of the opposition when they were the government. We used it effectively when someone who called (himself) deputy prime minister in their government was connected by shareholding to the company that got the contract, and they around here talking about cronyism.”

Now that the committee is meeting, it is the Christie government that has blocked it by not producing the documents. This certainly does not benefit the Christie government. But it does succeed in making Bahamians more suspicious of its intent.

But to get back to Mr Fitzgerald and his Ministry’s extra $8m grant for education, unless it is spent effectively in the problem areas, at the end of the day the results will be the same as the observation made in a confidential BGCE report leaked from the Ministry of Education in 2004: “Were it not for the private schools and a few public high schools in the Family Islands, the Mean Grade for the country would have been an astounding E (rather than D). This is totally unacceptable.” This explains why so many students are coming out of the public school system without even the basic qualifications to get a job. We advise Mr Fitzgerald to spend that $8m wisely.

Although the “to-be or not-to-be” announcement by Bamboo Town MP Renward Wells was billed as Monday morning’s House of Assembly feature, we shall return to that at another time. But for now we shall stay with Mr Fitzgerald.

At a meeting of the House last month, the signing of a nolle prosequi (no prosecution) by Mr Fitzgerald as acting attorney general was raised by Montagu MP Richard Lightbourn. This is an issue that no one seems to want to put to rest, suggesting that there is more to it than meets the eye.

The facts behind Mr Lightbourn’s question involved a foreign couple who were the former clients of Attorney General Allyson Maynard Gibson when she was in private practice. Charges against the pair were still pending when Mrs Maynard Gibson became Attorney General. The matter had been sent to the Attorney General’s office, obviously for an opinion.

At the time in question, Attorney General Maynard-Gibson appointed Mr Fitzgerald to act in her absence while she was out of the country. In her absence Mr Fitzgerald entered a nolle prosequi, dismissing all charges of gun and ammunition possession against the married couple.

Mr Lightbourn is not the only one who found it strange that this matter could not have awaited the return of the Attorney General. Mr Lightbourn had earlier asked for a select committee to investigate the matter. However, the PLP-controlled House voted against it. So here was Mr Lightbourn, back again asking the same question of Marathon MP Fitzgerald.

“Now I did some research all over the commonwealth countries,” Mr Lightbourn said when it was his turn to speak on the 2015/2016 Budget last week.

“I think that the member for Marathon probably deserves an award for being the most efficient acting minister of any commonwealth minister. That they would be appointed to be the acting attorney general and within a matter of minutes is able to go down to the Attorney General’s Office and locate one specific file out of no doubt hundreds while sitting in that office.

“He had no business there in the first place. There was no reason for him to go there. Then he is going to pull out one file and make a determination that the matter should have a nolle (no prosecution) issued. Something is wrong,” said Mr Lightbourn.

Mr Fitzgerald’s answer this time gave more clues than he has ever given before when this question was asked.

Repeating that he did nothing to be ashamed of, and that he would have done it again if such an occasion arose, he said:

“Now I have said before that I have nothing to hide. The facts in that case are clear. I said that there was advice on that file which I followed and at the end of the day I would do it again today because it was the right thing to do.”

The charges were dropped against the couple with Mr Fitzgerald saying he dismissed them because the case was a matter of national security.

This is the first time that we have learned that advice was left on the file for Mr Fitzgerald to follow.

It would be interesting to know what the advice was and who left him the advice to follow. Also who directed him to that file to deal with the matter in the Attorney General’s absence?

Just asking. Maybe one day, as Mr Fitzgerald says he did nothing to be ashamed of, he might join the disconnected dots and answer the question.