The Tribune

FORMER Cabinet Minister George Smith was quick earlier this year to condemn the Public Accounts Committee for dereliction of its duties, branding it as the worst committee he had ever seen. Not only had it “failed miserably”, he said, but it was “impotent”.

Mr Smith knows better. He was once again up to his party’s well honed tricks of under-the-table politics. He knows that the Public Accounts Committee — no matter how powerful — can only function if it has the cooperation of the various government agencies that should willingly submit their accounts for scrutiny. Failure to do so only invites raised eyebrows — not the raised brows of George Smith, but the raised eyebrows of solid citizens, who want to be satisfied that their money has been honestly spent.

Bahamians have had alarming reports of monies missing from various government departments, yet no one in the PLP government seems to understand that this can only happen when government refuses to allow the Public Accounts Committee to function.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is the only parliamentary committee that is controlled by the Opposition. Its function is to be the official watchdog of the Public Purse. The committee is appointed at the beginning of each session of parliament. “The main function of this Committee,” says Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice, “is to make sure that the parliamentary grants for each financial year, including supplementary grants, have been applied to the object which Parliament prescribed, and to consider the matters brought to the notice of Parliament in the reports made by the Comptroller and Auditor General as a result of his audit.” This committee was appointed for the first time in England in 1861.

The committee can also send for papers and subpoena whomever it wants to assist in its investigations.

Obviously, Mays, in his drafting did not anticipate a government such as the PLP that would throw every road block possible in the path of this committee to prevent its functioning. And then to have politicians — who have been around long enough to know the truth – deliberately distort that truth for their own political ends.

In an interview with a Tribune reporter in April this year, George Smith said that if the public is to judge the FNM by the PAC’s track record over the last four years, they would see the FNM as a “failure” and incapable of governing this country. Not so. If the public knew the truth behind this committee’s inability —not unwillingness — to function, it would demand an immediate election, vote this government out and have a proper inquest into this country’s finances.

In February this year, PAC chairman Hubert Chipman asked government to provide information into the Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute (BAMSI). Mr Chipman said that at that point his committee had not had “one iota” of information. He asked House Speaker Dr Kendal Major to assist his committee. He complained that he had written various government ministers – among them Deputy Prime Minister “Brave” Davis, and Agriculture Minister V Alfred Gray – but up to the time of his complaint not one of them had even acknowledged the committee’s request.

If government refuses to cooperate, complained Mr Chipman, the PAC is left “to search for a needle in a haystack.” And George Smith feigns surprise? What hypocrisy - hypocrisy because he knows the truth.

Mr Smith then goes on to boast to our reporter: “I am surprised that the present Public Accounts Committee has appeared to be impotent in discharging the responsibilities of the nation and there ought to be no excuses for that.

“The Public Accounts Committee during my tenure in the House of Assembly and many of those committees over the years did the work and did so assiduously and the public was generally satisfied with their performance.

“If the goal is to investigate these things and if the end result is if they can have an impact on the performance of the government and the public concludes that those are reasons to withdraw support from the government of the day, the PAC can take credit for it.

“Their role is to investigate and to make recommendations. Then the consequence of that may be on the continuity of a particular party in government, but their objective must not be seen to be purely intended to overthrow the government. That would mean that they are then concentrating on an objective that is not supported by what their mandate really is.”

The only reason that the PAC committee, under the PLP could function efficiently was because an FNM government, under Hubert Ingraham, respected the role of the committee and cooperated with its requests. The Ingraham government didn’t stop to investigate the motives of the committee - whether it was sincerely doing its job to project the people’s finances, or whether it was looking for a lever to oust his government. In other words, unlike Mr Chipman’s PAC under the Christie government, as long as the Ingraham government was in power the PLP-headed PAC was never left to “look for a needle in a haystack.” It was allowed to function.

Mr Smith knows the truth. Not only does he owe Mr Chipman and his committee an apology for his untruths, but this government should be soundly condemned for all the road blocks that it has put in this committee’s path to prevent its functioning.