The re­cent im­broglio be­tween Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass, whilst trou­bling, did not sur­prise me.

Re­cent­ly in Ja­maica, the Speak­er of the House, on re­ceiv­ing two Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­ports, re­turned them with­out tabling them to the House. She de­mand­ed they be sent to the rel­e­vant min­is­ters first.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al stood her ground and re­sent them to par­lia­ment. The Speak­er re­cant­ed her po­si­tion af­ter mount­ing pub­lic pres­sure.

Di­rec­tor of the Ja­maica Ac­count­abil­i­ty Por­tal, Jeanette Calder, said, “The fail­ure to ta­ble re­ports for more than a month is a threat to ef­fi­cient par­lia­men­tary over­sight and mon­i­tor­ing of gov­ern­ment agen­cies.”

The Glean­er ed­i­to­r­i­al (26/3/2024) de­mand­ed that “the Speak­er ex­plain her ac­tions, any­thing short of this will on­ly re­in­force the per­cep­tion among crit­ics of the Speak­er ex­er­cis­ing her pow­ers in a fash­ion that shields the Gov­ern­ment from scruti­ny un­der the guise of tack­ing close­ly to the rules”.

The op­po­si­tion PNC said, “The Speak­er’s de­vi­a­tion from es­tab­lished pro­to­col hin­ders the time­ly dis­sem­i­na­tion of cru­cial in­for­ma­tion vi­tal for trans­par­ent gov­er­nance.”

The Speak­er claimed she act­ed on ad­vice ob­tained from the AG, which was not made pub­lic.

In our sit­u­a­tion, Sen­a­tor Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye said our Au­di­tor Gen­er­al was owed an apol­o­gy and it ‘as­tound­ed’ her that our AG had told Ram­dass she should seek in­de­pen­dent le­gal coun­sel when she wrote to him for ad­vice.

I won­der if an AG can serve two en­ti­ties, pol­i­tics may trump ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Hope­ful­ly, our PM, who has de­scribed this im­passe as “un­nec­es­sary, dan­ger­ous bac­cha­nal,” can pre­vent this sit­u­a­tion from es­ca­lat­ing.

This can dam­age our in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion. We are al­ready get­ting some in­ter­na­tion­al crit­i­cism on press free­dom fol­low­ing Christo­pher Hugh’s de­ten­tion.

The PM said, “Let the in­ves­ti­ga­tors do their job,” while the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion spoke of a “scathing at­tack” and Ram­dass be­ing “hound­ed out of of­fice”.

Could this just be Op­po­si­tion rhetoric?

Well, in Ghana, top in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Man­asseh Azure Awu­ni wrote an ar­ti­cle, How Ghana’s Pres­i­dent Hound­ed the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Out of Of­fice, pub­lished in ZAM in 2020.

It il­lus­trat­ed cor­rup­tion in Pres­i­dent Aku­fo-Ad­do’s gov­ern­ment, de­scrib­ing the re­moval of a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor and de­tail­ing how Ghana’s Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, Daniel Yaw Domele­vo, was pres­sured out of of­fice af­ter rais­ing cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions against a min­is­ter who is the pres­i­dent’s cousin. It al­so re­vealed a lack of prop­er pro­cure­ment, pay­ment for un­ac­count­ed work, and monies paid be­fore a con­tract was en­tered in­to.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, who asked for clar­i­fi­ca­tion, was re­peat­ed­ly ig­nored and he re­fused to rein­spect doc­u­ments af­ter the au­dit was com­plet­ed, ex­plain­ing that breached the pro­ce­dures of au­dit­ing and would set a bad prece­dent.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al elab­o­rat­ed, “What that means is if a pub­lic of­fi­cer is giv­en mon­ey to buy ten cars and the au­di­tors go and could not find the cars and he can­not ex­plain and the au­dit is com­plet­ed, he can ig­nore them and when they are about to sur­charge and dis­al­low, he can go and buy the cars and say come and look at it.”

Domele­vo was forced by Ghana’s Pres­i­dent to pro­ceed on leave and his in­ter­im re­place­ment re­versed his find­ings.

Awu­ni, wrote, “On De­cem­ber 9, 2019, Den­mark’s Am­bas­sador to Ghana, Tove Deg­n­bol, said, ‘It is par­tic­u­lar­ly sad to see that cer­tain pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions are do­ing their ut­most to put hin­drances in the way for in­tegri­ty in­sti­tu­tions such as the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Of­fice and the Of­fice of the Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor on an­ti-cor­rup­tion. As we are ap­proach­ing an elec­tion year, the at­tacks against in­tegri­ty in­sti­tu­tions and in­di­vid­u­als con­tribut­ing to fight cor­rup­tion seem to be on the in­crease. This is not­ed with a lot of con­cern by many in the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.”

On Feb­ru­ary 26, 2020, when he was still the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, Domele­vo opened the third Bi-An­nu­al Con­fer­ence of Re­gion­al Au­di­tors in Ho. He said in­ter­nal au­di­tors need full au­ton­o­my to help end cor­rup­tion in the coun­try. They were the cus­to­di­ans of ac­count­abil­i­ty, but were weak­ened by “em­ploy­er dom­i­nance and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence”, and must be grant­ed full in­de­pen­dence to de­liv­er their man­date and must show strength and not be coaxed or threat­ened in­to pro­duc­ing shod­dy work.

“Let’s not take the risk as­so­ci­at­ed with our of­fice as an ex­cuse for non-per­for­mance. Yes, there is risk, but it is part of the oc­cu­pa­tion­al haz­ard and we must ac­cept and dri­ve on for God and Coun­try, and not for our per­son­al in­ter­est,” he said.

He said pro­tec­tion of the pub­lic purse hinged on the gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, ef­fi­cient de­liv­ery of ser­vices, strate­gic al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources, and the elim­i­na­tion of cor­rup­tion, which was a “ma­jor threat that must be fought”.

I end by not­ing Domele­vo’s words, “My col­league au­di­tors, let’s not be afraid in fight­ing cor­rup­tion. When you fight cor­rup­tion, it would fight you back. When they praise you too much, it means you are a bad au­di­tor.”