ROSE­MARIE SANT

Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona has de­ferred his re­sponse to ques­tions now in the pub­lic do­main re­lat­ing to is­sues at Pres­i­dent's House. His re­sponse will be giv­en on Wednes­day.

Last week Pres­i­dent's House an­nounced that Car­mona would have re­spond­ed to ques­tions about al­leged pur­chas­es of wine, jew­el­ry, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port and the meet­ing with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter by yes­ter­day.

Even as the coun­try await­ed his ex­pla­na­tion the Pres­i­dent turned his guns on the me­dia in his Re­pub­lic Day speech crit­i­cis­ing those whom he called "arm­chair jour­nal­ists" who he said at­tacked oth­ers with­out ev­i­dence.

It was hoped that the Pres­i­dent would have set the records straight on Mon­day al­most ten days af­ter the al­le­ga­tions were first made, but short­ly af­ter 11 am yes­ter­day a state­ment from Pres­i­dent's House said that "very re­cent ad­di­tion­al mat­ters have arisen in the pub­lic do­main war­rant­i­ng a more com­pre­hen­sive re­sponse from the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent."

In the cir­cum­stances, the state­ment said, Car­mona "must de­fer his in­tend­ed re­sponse from to­day to Wednes­day."

There was no ex­pla­na­tion of what were the "very re­cent ad­di­tion­al mat­ters" which had arisen.

The Pres­i­dent is ex­pect­ed to re­spond to ques­tions about why bot­tles of wine are car­ry­ing a la­bel of the Pres­i­dent's House seal, whether jew­el­ry was pur­chased us­ing state funds al­lo­cat­ed to Pres­i­dent's House, ques­tions about a $28,000 hous­ing al­lowance al­though he gets state ac­com­mo­da­tion, the em­ploy­ment of rel­a­tives at Pres­i­dent's House, the is­sue of styl­ist Pri­mati Noe be­ing em­ployed as his per­son­al sec­re­tary and al­so the is­sue of a meet­ing which he called with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon to dis­cuss na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that while Car­mona in­tends to give a lengthy re­sponse in the pres­ence of the me­dia cam­eras no ques­tions would be en­ter­tained.

It was the lat­est Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port, dat­ed April 29, which first raised ques­tions about ex­pen­di­ture at Pres­i­dent's House.

"There were 85 in­stances of in­cor­rect clas­si­fi­ca­tion of ex­pen­di­ture to­talling $2,685,236.90 in con­tra­ven­tion of Fi­nan­cial Reg­u­la­tion 65 which stip­u­lates that a vote may not be ap­plied to a pur­pose for which it was not in­tend­ed," the re­port stat­ed.

Re­sponse giv­en to Au­di­tor Gen­er­al

Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Ma­jeed Ali said a man­age­ment let­ter was sent to the Head of Ex­pen­di­ture by let­ter dat­ed March 15, seek­ing re­spons­es but the re­sponse re­mained out­stand­ing up to April 29, when the re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al not­ed that "mean­ing­ful re­sponse to au­dit is­sues raised is a cru­cial step to­wards re­solv­ing ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and in­ter­nal con­trol weak­ness­es. It al­so re­flects man­age­ment's com­mit­ment to im­prov­ing fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and achiev­ing good gov­er­nance."

The re­port re­mind­ed ac­count­ing of­fi­cers that they "are re­quired by Fi­nan­cial Reg­u­la­tion 8 (l) to '...re­ply prompt­ly and ful­ly to any queries...' of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al."

Re­quests were made for a re­sponse to the mat­ters raised to be sub­mit­ted with­in three weeks of the date of is­sue of the mem­o­ran­dum. But up to April 15, no re­sponse had been forth­com­ing from Pres­i­dent's House.

In the re­port, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al made it clear that er­rors or omis­sions which were not­ed "have no ma­te­r­i­al ef­fect on the truth and fair­ness of the Pub­lic Ac­counts," un­less oth­er­wise stat­ed in the re­port.

He went on to re­mind ac­count­ing of­fi­cers "of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that the state­ments sub­mit­ted are thor­ough­ly checked for er­rors and omis­sions be­fore sub­mis­sion."

Ques­tioned about the is­sue in June this year, Ali told Par­lia­ment's Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee that the al­lo­ca­tions were "post­ed to the wrong votes."

Asked for a fur­ther ex­pla­na­tion, Deputy Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Gaitree Ma­haraj ex­plained that "an ex­am­ple may have been of­fi­cial trav­el ex­pens­es were post­ed as of­fi­cial trav­el rather than maybe va­ca­tion trav­el which re­lates to the per­son­al emol­u­ments of the of­fice hold­er, sim­i­lar to these," she said.

Ma­haraj said the re­sponse came sub­se­quent­ly and "it ex­plained that many of the items may have been en­tered sub­se­quent­ly in­to the in­ven­to­ry reg­is­ter." She, how­ev­er, gave no de­tails.

Don't use pow­er to at­tack cit­i­zens–Bharath

And the video blog­ger who first raised ques­tions about the pur­chase of wine and jew­el­ry at Pres­i­dent's House and sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the $2.6 mil­lion which was raised in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port said she is no "arm­chair jour­nal­ist." Rho­da Bharath told the Morn­ing Brew on CNC3 she is a lec­tur­er and re­searcher and was sim­ply ask­ing ques­tions. Her ad­vice to the Pres­i­dent who launched an at­tack on the me­dia on Re­pub­lic Day was sim­ply "an­swer the ques­tions."

She said the Pres­i­dent was out of line us­ing his Re­pub­lic Day ad­dress to at­tack jour­nal­ists, say­ing "it was in­ap­pro­pri­ate."

She said Car­mona need­ed to ad­dress the is­sues in the pub­lic do­main, in­clud­ing ques­tions about rel­a­tives be­ing em­ployed at Pres­i­dent's House, ques­tions about ar­eas not prop­er­ly ac­count­ed for at Pres­i­dent's House raised by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, and the is­sue of a hous­ing al­lowance even though he has state hous­ing.

If he fails to an­swer the ques­tions she said, "It will be very un­com­fort­able for him and his house­hold."

Bharath said: "If on­ly one thing there is true and there is no rea­son to be­lieve it is not true, we need to ask the Pres­i­dent to re­con­sid­er his de­ci­sion to ac­cept the of­fice."

But she said as some­one who should up­hold the Con­sti­tu­tion the Pres­i­dent should an­swer the ques­tions "and show the pop­u­la­tion it is pos­si­ble for the high­est of­fice hold­er to an­swer ques­tions," and not use his "pow­er to at­tack cit­i­zens."