In wind­ing up his con­tri­bu­tion to the sec­toral de­bates in the Ja­maican House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Tues­day, April 30, 2024, Phillip Paulwell, MP for East Kingston and Port Roy­al and Leader of Op­po­si­tion Busi­ness in the House in his pub­lished re­marks of what he de­liv­ered in the House said: “… You have asked that the Stand­ing Or­ders be re­viewed to pro­vide you with guid­ance as to the tabling of re­ports from the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. With re­spect Madam Speak­er, the rules that cur­rent­ly ex­ist are quite fine and must not be ad­just­ed in any way. But we do need new rules to re­store the chair­man­ship of the sev­er­al over­sight com­mit­tees to the Op­po­si­tion. And Madam Speak­er we must bet­ter de­fine the re­la­tion­ship be­tween your­self and the ad­min­is­tra­tive staff of Par­lia­ment. Need­less to say, I will again call up­on you to with­draw that egre­gious let­ter that was sent to the for­mer clerk along with an ap­pro­pri­ate apol­o­gy. This mat­ter will dog you for the rest of your term as Speak­er if you don’t do the right thing to re­store equi­lib­ri­um and work­ing re­la­tion­ships with­in this ho­n­ourable House.” 

The Speak­er, Juli­et Hol­ness, was not in the chair that day, yet Paulwell ad­dressed her through the Deputy Speak­er, Heroy Clarke, MP for St James Cen­tral.

Juli­et Hol­ness, MP for St An­drew East Rur­al and wife of Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness, was elect­ed Speak­er last Sep­tem­ber 26 fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Marisa Dal­rym­ple-Philib­ert (MP for Trelawny South­ern) on Sep­tem­ber 21.

The con­tro­ver­sies to which Paulwell re­ferred were (i) the de­ci­sion of the Speak­er not to lay two spe­cial re­ports in the House from the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, one on the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Com­mis­sion and the oth­er on Tax Ad­min­is­tra­tion Ja­maica, and, (ii) the cir­cu­la­tion, to MPs, of a let­ter of rep­ri­mand against the then out­go­ing Clerk of Par­lia­ment, Va­lerie Cur­tis, in re­la­tion to the han­dling of these two Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s spe­cial re­ports.

The first mat­ter re­lat­ed to spe­cial re­ports from the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al on the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (sub­mit­ted on De­cem­ber 28, 2023) and the Tax Ad­min­is­tra­tion Ja­maica (sub­mit­ted on Jan­u­ary 29, 2024) which were re­turned to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al on March 22, 2024 from the Speak­er with­out be­ing laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, Pamela Mon­roe El­lis, sent the two re­ports right back to the Speak­er on March 25. This led to a flam­ing con­tro­ver­sy about a rul­ing made by the Speak­er last No­vem­ber that spe­cial re­ports from the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al are to be sent to the re­spon­si­ble min­is­ter for re­view up to two months be­fore be­ing laid in the House.

Speak­er Hol­ness al­so cir­cu­lat­ed the let­ter of rep­ri­mand that she had sent to the Clerk of the House, Va­lerie Cur­tis, and in­di­cat­ed that a copy of the let­ter would be placed on her file. Cur­tis has since re­tired amidst glow­ing trib­utes from par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, in­clud­ing the Speak­er. It is not known if the let­ter of rep­ri­mand is still on her file.

Cur­tis re­spond­ed be­fore she re­tired that she had com­plied with all di­rec­tives and rul­ings made by the Speak­er. 

This on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sy in the first in­de­pen­dent coun­try of the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean has been met by a par­al­lel con­tro­ver­sy with the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al in the sec­ond coun­try to at­tain in­de­pen­dence in the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean—Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The bat­tle lines have been drawn be­tween the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. It took un­til April 26 in­stant (the first sit­ting of the House af­ter sub­mis­sion of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port on April 24) for a mo­tion to be moved and ap­proved on a retroac­tive ba­sis for de­layed sub­mis­sion of doc­u­ments af­ter the Jan­u­ary 31 dead­line for de­part­men­tal sub­mis­sion of ac­counts from the Min­istry of Fi­nance to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and, si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, an ex­ten­sion from April 30 to Au­gust 31 for the sub­mis­sion of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port.

Of course, there is one wrin­kle here and that is that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port has al­ready been sub­mit­ted amidst a firestorm of le­gal cor­re­spon­dence and po­lit­i­cal vit­ri­ol. So what hap­pens to that?

Now, there is an in­ves­ti­gat­ing com­mit­tee to find out why the Min­istry of Fi­nance was un­able to make a com­plete sub­mis­sion of doc­u­ments and da­ta by Jan­u­ary 31 in­stant and made sup­ple­men­tal sub­mis­sions which have been chal­lenged.

What is hap­pen­ing in the old­est in­de­pen­dent coun­tries of the re­gion with ac­count­ing and au­dit­ing?  

Prof Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.