I wish to publicly apologise to the many supporters, members, and the public at large who rightly felt frustrated and angry at the absence of Trevor Williams at the Public Accounts Committee meeting of June 25th. Indeed he should have made better arrangements, notwithstanding his work commitments, to find himself out of the Essequibo River and at that very important meeting.
The young man is definitely tormented by this faux pas and has been contrite after the verbal chastisement he got from the AFC’s Management Committee last Monday. Our leadership impressed upon him and all MPs the critical positions they hold and the trust placed upon them by the people of Guyana.
I am confident that Mr. Williams will not ever see any recurrence of the sort, and will represent the AFC and the people of Guyana as best as he could. Here is a hope that he develops into a fine parliamentarian.
But I must say that this instance reveals how pressured life is for the Opposition Parliamentarians. We have to be there always and all times in the Committees and in the larger Assembly. This wolf-pack, the PPP, is going to hound you down at every opportunity and ensure that an advantage is taken at your absence.
And the pressure will be all the more on the AFC members when work in the sector committees begin. This is so because there is no alternate granted to it. Alternates were granted only to the PPP and APNU. An alternate is that named person who is entitled to attend and vote at meetings in these Committees when a substantive member from the PPP and/or APNU is absent.
Though myself and Sheila Holder in the last Parliament fought hard to change the rules to get an alternate for the AFC, realizing that there will be occasions when for good reasons the substantive member will be absent, both the PNC and PPP denied us that change. At that time we were told that the AFC will not be in existence after the next elections, and so the rules must not be changed just at a party’s request.
Well the AFC is here to stay. And we will have to change it this time, and I am hoping that APNU now will shed the thinking of the PNC then. It is APNU who will have to support the AFC on this issue, as I fear the PPP never will.
I wish to point out that the process which transpired in the Committee Room of the PAC on 25th June 2012, was riddled with mis-advice, which then realized an improper approval of the request sought by the Audit Office. Pressure was brought to bear by the four PPP members, and especially Ms. Gail Teixeira, on the four APNU members that the Chairman, Mr. Carl Greenidge, did not have an original vote. There is every indication that the Clerk to the Committee meekly submitted too. That Mr. Greenidge was not allowed to vote was as demeaning as the advice was erroneous.
I have given an opinion to my Party on the issue and I want to restate some points therein.
The Public Accounts Committee, PAC, is a Standing Committee of Parliament and not a Select Committee. The PAC was created by Standing Order 80, and by Rule 5, thereof every member of this Committee “shall have the right to vote therein.” Indeed, there is a proviso stating that unless the vote is otherwise taken away by these Standing Orders, this entitlement to vote will remain in every member. Nowhere in the Standing Orders is this original vote of each and every member of the PAC, and hence Mr. Greenidge’s was taken away!
The mischief however was done by PPP members misapplying a Rule under a different Standing Order which is applicable only to Select Committees, namely, Standing Order 102 Rule (3) which indeed provides for no original vote for the Chairperson, but gives him a casting vote in the event of an equality of votes. The Select Committees which this Rule applies to include the Standing Orders Committee, Committee of Privileges, Statutory Instruments, Assembly Committee, and those Special Select Committees set up under Standing Order 93.
This Rule disentitling the Chairperson of Select Committees has no application to Standing Committees which are distinct and separate committees. Standing Committees include the Committee of Selection, the Public Accounts, Committee of Appointments, Parliamentary Management Committee, and all the Sectoral Committees.
The limited application of Standing Order 102 can be discerned by its actual title and words: “Divisions in Select Committees”. It never said Standing Committees. This misapplication of the law and norms by the PPP members to squeeze an advantage, the AFC sees happening elsewhere, even our High Court. It means that the Opposition, which fought hard for the 4-4-1 arrangement, will see its 4 in these Standing Committees really mean 3! This absurdity I never contemplated, and I rather suspect neither did right-thinking members of Parliament!
What this means is that the members of the PAC and moreover its Chairperson, acted upon a mistake if not a blatant misrepresentation, and thus got misled; which ought to thus vitiate the decision of the PAC. Its 4 PPP votes for and 3 APNU votes against on the appointments of managers and Directors were thus not proper, or legitimate or valid. It should be recalled and the matter wholly reviewed. The process was infected with an illegality. Hence, the final product, namely the approvals sought by the Acting Auditor General, must per force of logic and commonsense, be contaminated. And hence void and invalid.
Moreover, the main issue of the conflict of interest arising has not been addressed. A matter as important as this, with constitutional and ethical implications, ought not to have been the subject of a PAC vote as engineered by the PPP representative in the absence of the full committee of the PAC.
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