Over the last four years, this column has been scrutinizing the various financial papers that have been submitted to the National Assembly for approval. The last such scrutiny was Financial Papers 1/2015 and 2/2015 covering: (a) an amount of $3.240 billion relating to advances from the Contingencies Fund that the former Minister of Finance had authorised during the period 25 October 2011 to 31 December 2014; and (b) excess expenditure totalling $6.471 billion incurred from 1 January 2012 to 16 July 2014 again on the authority of the former Minister.
I had commented that it was good that the new Administration was taking seriously the task of “cleaning up” the books of the Government and of regularizing matters in order to move forward without contamination with past issues that were left unresolved. The sad reality, however, is that no sanctions were imposed on those responsible for the serious constitutional and legislative violations giving rise to these two papers. It will be recalled that the then acting Chief Justice had ruled that the then Minister of Finance had violated the Constitution as it relates to Financial Paper 2/2015.