Within the next few weeks, a bill will be carried to Parliament to repeal it, get it out of the way and get the Public Accounts Committee back on to a platform of decency . . . . – Prime Minister Freundel Stuart at a meeting of the St Philip North branch of the ruling Democratic Labour Party (DLP), October 13.
Faithful readers may recall my saying that if politicians look here for praise then they will be sorely disappointed.
That’s because I don’t believe that anyone should praise a politician for merely doing his job with the fulfilment of campaign or manifesto promises – I would perhaps say that they have not done or gone far enough!
Today, however, I have to make that rare exception in favour of the enigmatic Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, who has promised to repeal the 2003 Public Accounts Committee Act passed by a misguided Barbados Labour Party (BLP) Administration – but which clearly conflicts with the Standing Orders of the House of Assembly that are part of the Constitution.
That was, I believe it was suggested, an attempt to enhance the functioning of the PAC, but it backfired.
Having said that, without any intention of imputing improper motives to the Prime Minister, I firmly believe that while he will be doing the right thing, he will be doing it for the wrong reasons.
Why? It’s wrapped up in his less than erudite explanation to his fellow parishioners when he spoke of a PAC that was “hounding” and “grilling” witnesses and operating outside of local traditions and jurisprudence. According to reports, he also complained of the processes and committees of Parliament being perverted.
Stuart was also reported as saying that the 2003 act had sought to remove management of the traditionally Opposition-chaired PAC from the Standing Orders and had broadened its composition to include members of the Senate, both Independent and Government-nominated members.
He recalled that the Democratic Labour Party, in Opposition, had voted against the bill, but when it took office in 2008 “we did not think we needed to trouble it as long as it was not being abused”.
He said even former Prime Minister Owen Arthur, whose Government passed the bill, had reservations about the legislation and had referred to the new-look PAC as a “kangaroo court” – a characterization with which he agreed.
Now, if my memory serves, Stuart was part of the Opposition Shadow Cabinet in 2003, with primary responsibility for the Attorney General’s portfolio, a position he was to formally hold after the 2008 general election.
But I have grave difficulty accepting that the possibility of a conflict between the Standing Orders and the new legislation was not raised then by the DLP’s most senior legal advisor at the height of that party’s exuberant (though not irrationally so!) pursuit of alleged “corruption” in the Arthur Administration.
Stuart apparently did not, and does not now, have a problem with the obvious difficulties created by the PAC having two antagonistic parents – one that permits open hearings and the other that absolutely forbids them.
Instead, he is concerned that the latest PAC chair, Leader of the Opposition Mia Mottley, has adopted the freeway of the 2003 legislation to “summon people from the Ministry of Housing . . . and trying to prove that all the corruption in the world happened in the Ministry of Housing”.
He indicated that while the legislation and the Standing Orders make clear that hearings of the PAC should be “so conducted that Parliament receives a report first, before anybody else”, people could now “sit down in their homes online and watch [the hearings] all across the world”.
Stuart also said he was not going to allow anyone “to unnecessarily hound down people in the Cabinet of Barbados whose only crime is that they’re trying to do the best for the country”.
So clearly, the Prime Minister’s problem is not with the operation of an unconstitutional law that purports to trump the paramountcy of the Constitution (a position apparently held by my constitutional lawyer friend!) but the near prosecutorial zeal with which the PAC chairman is pursuing “corruption” in the ministry via the 2003 act.
The offences? Not only does she “summon” people from the ministry, but she also permits live streaming on the Internet, which provides an instantaneous report for anyone outside the Committee Room (against the Standing Orders but permitted by the 2003 act), and the PAC seemed to be operating like an arm of the elected Senate in the United States with hearings where officials are “grilled” on live television.
Therein lies Stuart’s problem.
By all means, repeal the law and do what I suggested eons ago: suspend Standing Order 61 and allow to PAC to function as the framers intended, that is, with a general permission for all-media coverage.
Mark Twain also has some advice: “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
• Albert Brandford is an independent political correspondent.
