The 2020 suite of amend­ments to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment & Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act (the Act) re­moved over­sight from some sig­nif­i­cant types of pub­lic spend­ing and cre­at­ed the op­tion for the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to cre­ate new ex­emp­tions.

That min­is­te­r­i­al dis­cre­tion to cre­ate new ex­emp­tions is now the sub­ject of con­sid­er­able con­tro­ver­sy and threat­ened law­suits.

These is­sues have emerged from two three-month min­is­te­r­i­al ex­emp­tions–the Ju­di­cia­ry on May 29 and the 50th Cari­com An­niver­sary/Diplo­mat­ic mat­ters on June 29.

The first of those ex­emp­tions came as no sur­prise, giv­en the Ju­di­cia­ry’s bizarre and still un­ex­plained ob­jec­tions to the act.

The sec­ond set came to the at­ten­tion of the Op­po­si­tion and trig­gered the PM to promise that the act will be ac­cord­ing­ly amend­ed/rec­ti­fied at a spe­cial par­lia­men­tary sit­ting next week.

It is re­al­ly im­por­tant to pause at these mo­ments to take our bear­ings and record ex­act­ly what has tak­en place.

It is clear from the Hansard that Par­lia­ment in­tend­ed and agreed that these min­is­te­r­i­al ex­emp­tions would be sub­ject to “af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion”, mean­ing that the pro­posed amend­ment had to be tabled/list­ed in Par­lia­ment for pub­lic no­tice, de­bat­ed and then vot­ed up­on by both hous­es.

The pur­pose of that arrange­ment is that al­though the Gov­ern­ment will nat­u­ral­ly hold the ma­jor­i­ty of votes in the Par­lia­ment, the pub­lic and the Op­po­si­tion can have prop­er no­tice of any in­tend­ed ex­emp­tions and take the nec­es­sary steps to deal with it po­lit­i­cal­ly.

For what­ev­er rea­son, that in­ten­tion is not in the text of the 2020 amend­ments, so the lit­er­al read­ing is that the min­is­ter can cre­ate those ex­emp­tions via an Or­der with­out any ref­er­ence to Par­lia­ment.

Of course, the prop­er in­ter­pre­ta­tion of that law would re­quire a court to ex­am­ine Par­lia­ment’s de­bates to de­cide, so one can on­ly won­der what ad­vice the Fi­nance Min­is­ter was pro­ceed­ing on.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter has been in of­fice since 2015 and his agree­ment to the af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion pro­vi­sion (Hansard of De­cem­ber 8, 2020, pg 202), as well as his recog­ni­tion that this er­ror had arisen and need­ed to be rec­ti­fied (Hansard of De­cem­ber 11, 2020, pg 43) are both on the record.

The com­pelling and in­escapable is­sue is that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter knew of the ty­po in the text and took full ad­van­tage of it in a man­ner which is un­be­com­ing and in my view, quite con­trary to his oath of of­fice.

Fi­nal­ly, we should all re­main alert as these are just a few of the bizarre con­vul­sions from play­ers who are ac­cus­tomed to the lights be­ing off, or at least suit­ably dimmed.

Sun­light is the best dis­in­fec­tant.