The members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament have been invited to a meeting on Friday to select a new chair following the removal of David Patterson from the post.
Speaker Manzoor Nadir has reached out to the members of the Committee to convene a meeting for the election of a new chair.
“It will happen at the end of this week,” Nadir told Stabroek News when contacted about the date of the meeting.
This newspaper has been able to confirm that the meeting is scheduled for 1:30 pm on Friday.
Patterson was removed via a motion of no confidence which was passed in the National Assembly last week.
Following five hours of debate in the early hours of June 22 the National Assembly decided 34-31 to remove Patterson ostensibly because of “exposures during the examination of the 2016 Auditor General’s Report” and his alleged violations of the Committee’s Standing Orders.
During the debate on the motion, Minister Gail Teixeira in whose name the motion was laid told the House that the government had lost confidence in Patterson because he was not being fair and balanced in his chairmanship of the Committee.
“This story started before February 1 from the time the Public Accounts Committee was formed. We began to see a behaviour that led us to believe that the gentleman chairing was not being fair, was not being balanced and was not granting us a hearing… While examining the Auditor General’s report, issues raised were strongly put down. There was a lack of tolerance… and therefore Mr Speaker I was the one who called on the Chair to resign,” Teixeira declared amidst loud heckles of “shame” from members of the Opposition.
The Minister did not identify which issues were ‘strongly put down”. This explanation for the motion differed distinctly from the government’s previous suggestion that Patterson should resign because of accusations of impropriety in his previous post as Minister of Public Infrastructure.
