The Tribune

COME hell or high water, the long-awaited and fought over Urban Renewal Report, completed at last by the Public Accounts Committee, will be presented to the House of Assembly next Wednesday — October 5.

The October 5 date was yet another delay for the report that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) had promised would be ready by March. Despite all the political roadblocks thrown in the committee’s path to guard its report from public scrutiny, August 31 was the day set by PAC Chairman Hubert Chipman for its presentation to the House.

“It was our intention this morning, Mr Speaker, to present the majority Urban Renewal Commission report from the PAC,” began Mr Chipman that Wednesday morning.

“However, in speaking with the member for Golden Gates (Shane Gibson) this morning, it is his intention to do a minority report which the committee has not had sight of. We’ve all agreed that at the next sitting, probably next week, once we have sight of the minority report (we will move) to make a presentation.”

However, at the end of that day’s sitting the House was adjourned to October 5. It is presumed that Mr Gibson’s minority report will be attached to the committee’s main report by that time.

The PAC’s investigation was the result of Auditor General Terrance Bastian’s critical report on Urban Renewal’s small homes programme. According to Mr Bastian’s report, 11 contractors were paid more than $170,000 for small home repairs that were either “not complete or not done”.

The Christie government rejected the Auditor’s report and commissioned its own report. At this point the PAC took over. However, the PAC has had an uphill battle to get answers to its questions. Meanwhile, such PLP politicians – as former Cabinet Minister George Smith – criticised the committee for its low volume of work. Instead, Mr Smith should have been criticising uncooperative civil servants and certain members of government who had either lost their memory or gone mute. Whatever their ailment, they have failed to cooperate.

The PAC still has much work to do. For example, there is still BAMSI – the Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute – and the way that programme was handled, especially the discovery after fire destroyed one of the new dormitories that the building was not insured by the contractor. Almost two years have passed and the committee has had no reply from its questions put to Deputy Prime Minister “Brave” Davis, who is also Minister of Works, and Agriculture Minister V Alfred Gray. Yet George Smith has the nerve to question the lack of production by this committee when the information needed to do its work is hidden behind closed government doors. Maybe, Mr Smith should spend some time lecturing his political buddies on the importance of a Public Accounts Committee in a Westminster system of government.

There are those who have said that they want to change our Westminster system, because it is not suited to The Bahamas. Of course it is not suited to The Bahamas, because leaders of this country, lacking the traditions of the system, have bastardised it.

There are many more matters before the PAC that the committee will probably not be able to investigate before the end of this session of the House.

For example, yet to be examined by this committee are the millions allegedly stolen at the Post Office bank. The missing funds at Road Traffic, both in Nassau and Abaco, and the cost of a side trip that the Prime Minister and his delegation took to Rome when on a mission to Europe.

However, there is nothing new in this behaviour. This system was honed to perfection under the late Sir Lynden Pindling. On My 11, 2005, the first paragraph in this column started:

“The government of the late Prime Minister Sir Lynden Pindling took every opportunity to assure Bahamians that it was accountable to them - except, it seems, when it came to the Public Accounts Committee.

“In those days, Bahamians saw politics in the raw when the time came to hide, disguise or hobble the only committee over which the Opposition was appointed to be the ‘pubic watchdog.’”

In the 1980s, the PAC was so frustrated by the Pindling government that it ceased to function from 1982 to 1987.

On discovery of this, the late Paul Adderley scoffed it into action.

“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,” he said. He pointed out that the Opposition had no control over what government spent its money on, but “the how” was in the hands of the all powerful committee – which was at that time not doing its job.

Mr Adderley claimed that he wanted the committee’s system to work. But he failed to point out that he and his own government were the chief contributors to the system having stalled.

In fact, the failure was so bad at that time that The Bahamas went into the 1992 general election without having the committee’s report on how the PLP government had used and abused public funds during that period.

However, this nonsense has to stop. In our opinion the Speaker is failing in his duties if he does not discipline his members to enable this Committee to function.

As so many House members believe they can breach the separation of powers rule by demanding that a Supreme Court judge be called before a House Committee, maybe the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee should test the waters by inviting the courts to discover what penalties can be exacted against those who refuse to cooperate with this important House committee when called upon to do so.

That’s certainly when we shall see some much needed fireworks.