APNU MP Carl Greenidge last night withdrew a motion to have the Audit Office taken off the list of budget agencies, revealing that Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh had recently signed an order to make the change.
Through the motion in his name, Greenidge was also seeking to have the entity restored to an autonomous agency drawing finances directly from the Consolidated Fund.
“The motion served its purpose,” Greenidge later told Stabroek News during a parliamentary break. “To our surprise on the day of the budget we saw an order signed by the Minister of Finance removing the Audit Office from the schedule at the back of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act and so as a result of that it was not necessary to go through with [the motion],” he explained.
He said the government by virtue of the minister’s order has now taken the Audit Office off the list of budget agencies identified by the law, thereby allowing it to draw directly from the Consolidated Fund. “What is puzzling is why they are not prepared to do it for obviously similar constitutional agencies, such as the Public Service Commission,” he, however, pointed out.
Greenidge’s motion noted that the Audit Office was being treated as a budget agency by virtue of the Act, calling into question the autonomy and independence of the office. He said that in examining the law, which was enacted in 2003, the opposition was concerned about the number of constitutional agencies that were being treated as budgetary agencies. “For all this time, since 2003, nine years or more, you had an Act that was contradicting the constitution,” he told Stabroek News. This, he added, “gave the Minister of Finance the opportunity to control them by controlling the money that they received and what they would use it for so that he could control their operations.”
Given the responsibilities of the Auditor General and the Audit Office, Greenidge said they “should not be constrained or necessarily influenced by other actors and officials,” while charging that the financial control over the agency was not an accident.
“It has taken this motion together with public criticism to embarrass the government into removing from that schedule the Office of the Auditor General. The statute was on the books un-amended for nine years,” he said to much loud heckling from government members, which prompted Speaker Raphael Trotman to urge the Assembly to allow Greenidge to continue his presentation uninterrupted.
In continuing, Greenidge commended the government for “doing the right thing at last” and in light of the current situation he announced his decision to withdraw the motion, which caused loud heckling among the government members in the House. Trotman, after taking a few seconds to restore order, said that the development came as a surprise, particularly since he was given a long list of persons scheduled to speak on the motion. Seven MPs were listed to debate the motion.
“I do wish to commend you on your dignified stance,” Trotman told Greenidge.
