Opinion Column: Time To Revisit Order In Council

December 9, 2014

[Opinion column written by David Tavares]

I read with interest the comments made by the View from Off The Hill on December 5th, 2014 and other opinions during this past week. There is no doubt in my mind that the Public Accounts Committee [PAC], should be reviewed with immediate haste!

In my opinion the taxpayers should be demanding a Royal Commission of Inquiry as to its effectiveness under its existing constituted format, function and responsibility. The Commission should be a totally independent body appointed by the Governor in council with an independent body and without any representation from the Government-of-the-day and partisan political representation.

Partisan politics has prevented the Auditor General’s office from achieving its “mission of adding credibility to the Government’s financial reporting and to promoting improvement in the financial administration of all Government Departments and controlled entities for which the Government is accountable to Parliament”.

The people of Bermuda need to know why the Office of the Auditor General, “which derives its authority from its legislative mandate”, cannot get our members of parliament to act expeditiously in taking corrective action necessary to ensure accountability and good governance.

Corruption is my acronym for; conniving opportunist relishing rewards unethically procured through immoral obsession and narcissism. One only needs to refer to a dictionary and look up the meaning and definition to these words and, like me, will quickly come to the conclusion that corruption in our island home does in fact rampantly exists even though we are in denial simply because there is no proof.

What short memories we have. Let us reflect back on some major scandals; Enron, WorldCom, Tyco International, Adelphia Communications, Parmalat, Global Crossing, HealthSouth. The outcomes resulting from these scandals highlighted many ways that managers and executives, and not to mention politicians, generally are in collusion with others [he, she or they], can make the numbers come out the way they want.

We now know what Corruption looks like, we need to act expeditiously! It is time to revisit Bermuda’s Order in Council [Constitution] and put in place a totally non-partisan watch-dog with real-time teeth.

If the people of Bermuda do not insist that corrective action must be immediate, then the “remora’s will have a feeding frenzy at the Airport development and the America’s Cup event and all the projects leading up to this new renaissance on growth and prosperity.

What will it really cost the people of Bermuda? Stay tuned we will find out from the Auditor General in 2021?

David Tavares

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Comments (3)

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  1. A Better Place says:

    While I agree with you on PAC to I also noted that you forget to mention that Commissions of Inquiry should be called on to investigate the Port Royal golf course, Grand Atlantic, the new Court House building, Berkley, TCD. Let’s start there first

  2. Lala says:

    One issue is that many of these reports go to Parliament first – where they get sat upon. The first stop for Government reports should be the internet – let the public know, early and loud.

  3. SMH says:

    Interesting how Mr. Tavares is suddenly in the news with a story every week and all of them never mention any of the PLP many wrong doings and all seem to tow the party line. Mmmmmm?