The heat­ed and pub­lic ex­change of words, and pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters, be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass, over the pub­li­ca­tion of the pub­lic ac­counts of T&T for the 2023 fi­nan­cial year, is un­prece­dent­ed in this coun­try's his­to­ry.

On the one hand, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert states that a let­ter from a law firm rep­re­sent­ing Ms Ram­dass con­tains “out­ra­geous, false and defam­a­to­ry ac­cu­sa­tions and al­le­ga­tions” over his in­volve­ment in the im­passe. On the oth­er hand, Ms Ram­dass ac­cus­es the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to "vil­i­fy and as­sas­si­nate her per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion" by at­tacks she con­sid­ers to "false, ma­li­cious and mis­lead­ing".

The vit­ri­olic lan­guage used by both sides is un­nec­es­sary and the first re­quire­ment is that both sides cease and de­sist from such lan­guage.

Cool­er heads must pre­vail in this mat­ter and we call on Prime Min­is­ter to live up to his role as this coun­try's el­der states­man, as well as its leader, by re­quir­ing Mr Im­bert and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, the lead pro­tag­o­nists for the Gov­ern­ment in this mat­ter, to calm down and stop hurl­ing in­sults at the per­son oc­cu­py­ing the in­de­pen­dent of­fice of Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

Ms Ram­dass al­so needs to be told that tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against your em­ploy­ers is treach­er­ous ter­ri­to­ry, and if one per­sists in do­ing so, one must al­so be pre­pared to deal with all pos­si­ble out­comes.

What is re­quired now, how­ev­er, is a fact-find­ing in­quiry to de­ter­mine where the Gov­ern­ment's re­port­ing of its rev­enue fell short of the re­quired stan­dards and why it took so long for the ap­par­ent dou­ble-count­ing of tax re­funds to be flagged.

In that re­gard, Mr Im­bert's sug­ges­tion that the dis­pute needs a full in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion is the ap­pro­pri­ate place to start.

As he stat­ed in the Sen­ate on Mon­day, the find­ings of this in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion "will be re­port­ed to the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and any oth­er rel­e­vant of­fice hold­er for their re­view and what­ev­er ac­tion these in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions deem ap­pro­pri­ate”.

The prob­lem with in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tions in this coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly those or­dered by the State, is the per­cep­tion of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, not to men­tion that they of­ten take too long and are not al­ways used as av­enues for im­prov­ing prac­tices in the pub­lic ser­vice or hold­ing those found neg­li­gent to ac­count for their ac­tions.

To quell the cyn­i­cism about yet an­oth­er in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the Gov­ern­ment needs to move quick­ly to iden­ti­fy the in­ves­ti­ga­tor, en­sure that they are tru­ly in­de­pen­dent and pro­vide a short dead­line for the com­ple­tion of the probe. This is not an over­ly com­pli­cat­ed mat­ter and clear­ly, pub­lic ser­vants are anx­ious for the truth to be told.

But be­fore, or per­haps in par­al­lel with the in­de­pen­dent in­quiry, both the Gov­ern­ment and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al need to be ad­vised on the cir­cum­stances in which a client, in this case the Gov­ern­ment, can sub­mit cor­rect in­for­ma­tion to an au­di­tor af­ter statu­to­ry dead­lines have passed.

One sug­ges­tion is that the opin­ions of the coun­try's top au­dit­ing firms could be sought to bring light to this is­sue that has so far at­tract­ed on­ly heat.

Al­so, this coun­try has many ac­coun­tants who are mem­bers of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Char­tered Cer­ti­fied Ac­coun­tants (AC­CA), which is the glob­al body for pro­fes­sion­al ac­coun­tants. Seek­ing an of­fi­cial ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion from AC­CA Glob­al that both sides agree, be­fore­hand, to ac­cept, may be one way to end this bit­ter dis­pute.