Editorial | Leave auditor general alone

The Gleaner remains deeply concerned over the concerted effort of some legislators, including senior ministers, to undermine the Integrity Commission (IC) as well as to dislodge the auditor general (AuG) as an ex-officio member of the commission.

With respect to the removal of the auditor general, there is a sense among an increasing number of Jamaicans that the campaign is deeply personal, targeted specifically at the current incumbent, Pamela Monroe Ellis, rather than the institution or office, whose leader has had membership of integrity oversight bodies for half-century, including on the first commission for the integrity of parliamentarians, established in the 1970s.

Two things reinforce the view that it is more Ms Monroe Ellis the individual, rather than any deeply-held philosophical belief of what ought to be the role of the institution she leads, that fuels the campaign.

One was the inanely frivolous questioning of Ms Monroe Ellis over two consecutive meetings of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in 2021 by three government committee members – Dwight Sibblies, Heroy Clarke, Robert Miller – over trivialities that they tried to morph into giant windmills.

They were like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and another, without the muddled knight’s purity of intent. The game, it appeared, was to undermine Ms Monroe Ellis’ credibility, over quibbling issues.

More recently, there was the misguided and distracting insistence of the Speaker of the House, Juliet Holness, that Ms Monroe Ellis’ reports to Parliament be delayed for months before being tabled, thereby hobbling the effectiveness of the AuG. Valrie Curtis, the then clerk to Parliament, became collateral damage in that ill-advised action, before Mrs Holness relented.

FLACCIDITY OF LOGIC

But more worrying is the flaccidity of the logic offered by the government members of the committee reviewing the Integrity Commission Act, for why auditors general (meaning Ms Monroe, who could be in the office for perhaps another decade-and-half) shouldn’t be members of the IC. She should be the one who conducts financial audits of the Integrity Commission. And if their argument is pursued to its logical end, the only one.

The auditor general is, per the Constitution, the government’s auditor. But it is also a fact that the office can cause audits to be done on its behalf by independent auditors, including private ones.

In any event, the Integrity Commission Act provides for the commission’s engagement of independent auditors to annually audit its financial accounts. However, the appointed auditor has to be approved by the minister of finance, which therefore means that the minister, in this area, could frustrate or override any decision by the IC commissioner with which she disagreed.

So, if that is the fear, there is little room for the commission to fiddle with the books without being exposed, which appears to be among the concerns of some members of the review committee who made heavy weather of the IC’s J$2 billion allocation.

The fact that the government members have persisted with their campaign to remove the auditor general from the commission (an idea initially floated by their loose-lipped and mercurial colleague, Everald Warmington) despite being advised by government lawyers that the constitutional pedestal upon which they attempted to construct their argument was built of straw, suggest a deeper motive, whose real basis might eventually reveal itself.

The position of the auditor general as an IC commissioner is not the matter that deserves close attention as the parliamentary committee moves close to completing its work and presenting its report to the House. There is the seemingly broader effort to erode public confidence in the commission, to which parliamentarians and other senior or critical public officials have to file annual income, assets and liabilities statements.

DISCONCERTING

This is particularly disconcerting when among the leaders of this campaign is Delroy Chuck, a long-time MP, the justice minister, legal luminary and one-time fervent campaigner for integrity in public life.

Government legislators have had an uneasy relationship with the IC for at least the past three to four years, over their disagreement with how the commission has done its job.

They have been angered, for instance, at the IC failure, over three cycles, to certify the assets and liabilities filing of Prime Minister Andrew Holness; the adverse findings of the commission against colleagues; and more recently, the commission’s request that the Financial Investigations Division (FID) conduct deeper investigation into the prime minister’s financial affairs after its own probe, it said, raised concerns but was inconclusive.

Government members, implying that the IC was soft on opposition parliamentarians, have accused the commission of bias, and of going out of its way to embarrass Prime Minister Holness and members of his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

Two years ago, Mr Chuck told his parliamentary colleagues that the Integrity Commission, whose members are, by law, selected and appointed by the governor general, lacked “integrity” and assailed it for presumed bias. Last week, in his latest tirade, Mr Chuck, 74, accused IC investigators of threatening behaviour, and called for the limiting of the commission’s power to demand information from third parties, including banks, about the subjects of its investigations. Mr Chuck previously exhorted public officials to defy IC requests for financial information about their spouses, as is allowed by the law.

These, taken together, would, if implemented, remove from the IC’s arsenal critical weapons in its fight against corruption. But when they are added with another of Mr Warmington’s proposals – effectively that the Integrity Commission be brought under the direct control of politicians – that would sound the death knell of the IC of a worthy anti-corruption agency. The best course then would be to just shut down the body and tell the last person out to turn off the lights.

Notwithstanding Mr Warmington being increasingly shown to be an effective stalking horse, we hope that, in the end, his proposals – and Mr Chuck’s – don’t get far.

We watch!