Chartered Accountant and attorney, Christopher Ram says that Minister of Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh could be in violation of two Acts if he has gone into the Contingency Fund to withdraw money to pay contract workers at the Office of the President.
The opposition had slashed provisions for contract workers in historic cuts made to this year’s budget.
Ram, in a letter published in the Stabroek News last week, recalled an announcement in September by Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon that “no one lost their jobs” and that “Contingency funds were approved and funds made available belatedly but still available to meet the wages and salaries of the contract workers [at OP].”
According to Ram, it is time to get worried. “Because, if that is so, the Minister of Finance is in violation of not one but two Acts – his own amended 2012 Budget Act and the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act, under the pretext of a misrepresentation of the court’s decision,” he wrote.
During one of his weekly post-cabinet meetings last month, Luncheon revealed that despite the cutting of their subventions from the national budget by the opposition, contract workers at the Office of the President and employees at other affected state entities have been paid. In the National Assembly in August, the Opposition again voted against an allocation of $211.5 million for the National Communica-tions Network (NCN) and the Government Information Agency (GINA). It also voted down the sum of $22.6 million for expenditure on wages and salaries for contracted employees under Office of the President Presidential Advisory and other services.
The government had taken the opposition to court and Dr. Luncheon said that the $1 that was approved by the opposition for the various agencies was totally inconsistent with the constitutional provision as ruled by the Chief Justice. “The Constitution says for a maximum of four months every year in the absence of a budget, the Finance Minister could withdraw from the Contingency Fund, wages and salaries whatever it takes to run the government,” he said, while explaining how money was found to pay the workers.
“The provision of a $1, the Chief Justice ruled was clearly inconsistent with that provision in the law so the Finance Minister did what the law provided for and made the money available to meet those expenditures,” he had said.
In April, the opposition effected over $20B in cuts from the budget, citing a lack of transparency and accountability in the explanations for the allocations. The government later moved to restore the amounts through an action in the High Court. Although finding that the National Assembly did not have the power to cut the budget, acting Chief Justice Ian Chang in July, in an interim ruling, said the court could not restore the funds, except for allocations to the Ethnic Relations Commission which is a constitutional agency and entitled to draw directly from the Consolidated Fund.
In his letter last week, Ram said that Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, Singh and Luncheon “have been busy distorting the decision in the Budget cuts case to mislead the public.” According to him, they appear to use their “flawed interpretation as the basis for continuing payments to party comrades…”
Ram said that the Chief Justice had rejected the application of the Attorney General and denied the Minister of Finance the “liberty” to make advances/withdrawals from the Consolidated Fund to restore the $21 billion 2012 budget cuts, except for the sum of $99,000,000 for the ERC. “The reason for restoring the amount for the ERC, according to the Chief Justice, is that it is a constitutional body subject to a direct charge on the Consolidated Fund. Accordingly, its budget allocation was not subject to a vote of the National Assembly,” Ram wrote.
He said that the Chief Justice had concluded his decision with the words that the matter brought by Nandlall is in its “preliminary stage” and that “the views expressed at this juncture are not final.”
“The misinterpretation suggests that the three do not have any regard for the truth, respect for the court, or deference for the National Assembly, the only body with the power over the spending of public funds. We may be tempted to discount Mr Nandlall and Dr Luncheon as ineffective political spinners. Not so Dr Singh. He controls the public purse of Guyana and the records show that he has not been unwilling to play around with the Contingencies Fund and the dormant bank accounts to the tune of billions of dollars,” Ram said.
“The question now is whether, after a prolonged break, the political opposition can muster the capacity and the courage to confront with all the powers at their disposal, the continuing lawless manner in which the country’s public funds have been mismanaged and misspent by Dr Singh, assured of a pliant and ineffective Audit Office,” he said.
