The Deputy Speaker of Parliament who also doubles as the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh, said there will be no more secrecy under his watch as head of the PAC as “the era of secrecy has passed”. He said this in reference to duty bearers having to give an account of their stewardship of the people’s money entrusted to them in the work of the Government of Sierra Leone.
For some time now people in government entrusted with public money have been operating without having to give an account of their expending of this public trust. They have been operating in secrecy for the past five years, and this has to come to an end.
As a public institution, governments cannot hide or operate in secret. Meanwhile there is a lot that government does in secret that is allowed. For example, the works of the police, the Office of National Security and other intelligence agencies, the president’s movement or travelling plans and other such work done for and on behalf of the people and government are expected to be done in secret.
But when it comes to how government workers spend money, there should not and cannot be any secret. How civil servants entrusted with the people’s purse spend such monies is a matter for public disclosure. If public workers are allowed to do such work in secrecy, it gives rise to impunity and all kinds of corrupt actions against the laws of the state. Allowed to continue without public sanction, this kind of behaviour gives rise to a shadow government, also referred to as cryptocracy, secret government, or invisible government, a family of theories based on the notion that real and actual political power resides not only with publicly elected representatives but with private individuals who are exercising power behind the scenes. Such people routinely flout the rule of law by issuing orders from above.
For too long in our governance history, Sierra Leone has been a victim of this kind of leadership that is unaccountable to the people and operates with impunity in secret.
Attempts to nip this trend in the bud is the purpose of financial audits, oversight functions and other performance appraisals in governments by the appropriate public institutions established by law to carry out such functions. The activity of such public institutions is to ensure that what should remain or be made public is actually done.
One such public institution is the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Legislative Branch of government. The duty of the committee is to examine the annual accounts showing the appropriation of the sums granted by the House to meet public expenditure together with the reports and special reports of the Auditor-General. The committee has the power to examine any accounts or reports of statutory corporations and boards after they have been laid on the table of the House, and to report from time to time to the House, and to sit regardless of any adjournment of Parliament.
It is a fundamental tenet of parliamentary democracy that governments may only collect revenue and make expenditure that has been authorised by Parliament. Governments are accountable to the legislature for the way in which they spend the funds they raise from taxpayers and other sources. Before taxpayers’ money is spent, legislatures will approve government income and expenditure plans. After the money has been spent, legislatures demand assurance that the money has been spent as intended by Parliament and in accordance with all relevant laws and regulations. They will seek explanations and improvements when things have gone wrong. These pre and post-expenditure activities form the heart of parliamentary financial scrutiny. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) fulfils the essential post-expenditure role in Sierra Leone.
The PAC has the power to question the officials of the Executive at public meetings, to demand documents which it considers relevant to its enquiry and to report its findings directly to a plenary session of the Parliament. The PAC is empowered to examine the annual accounts of government together with the report of the Auditor-General. Under the Government Budgeting and Accountability Act, the Auditor-General is required to submit to the Parliament a report following the end of each financial year. The Act also empowers the Auditor-General to submit “a special report” in certain circumstances.
The PAC is a committee of parliament. Its members, all MPs, are responsible for reviewing the financial statements of government ministries and agencies and examining issues relating to the management of public money. They focus on the effectiveness of financial management and delivery, asking in particular: How does the Executive spends money? On what does the Executive spend money? Have all the revenues due been collected? How do we know that the money was spent as it should have been?
The committee meets in public and publishes its proceedings and reports. Its work helps to ensure the transparency and openness of government by providing a public arena in which government spending is explained and debated and those responsible for the spending are held to account for their actions.
The PAC works in collaboration with the Auditor General and Audit Service Sierra Leone. Together they empower Parliament to be an effective guardian of the public purse on behalf of the citizens of Sierra Leone. Under the Constitution and other legislation the Auditor General and Audit Service of Sierra Leone are responsible for scrutinising public expenditure and providing an independent opinion on how the government has used public resources. They provide the reports that the PAC examines during the course of its work. The Auditor General and ASSL provide advice to the committee regarding the findings of the reports that they submit to Parliament and are invited to attend the hearings of the committee as expert witnesses and to support the committee in its deliberations.
The Auditor-General submits a report to the Clerk’s Office; while the Business Committee schedules and lays the report before the House. The PAC takes a sample of feedbacks and follows up to ascertain the veracity of the reports and progress of implementation of its recommendations. If there is need for a public hearing into the audited reports a public hearing is scheduled from which a report is generated by the committee.
However, for the past five years, people entrusted with public money have not given an account of how they spent such monies. Members of the Fifth Parliament failed the people of Sierra Leone by allowing vote controllers in government MDAs to operate in secrecy for which despite their being financial audits from the Audit Service Sierra Leone, the public was never made aware of how such spending were transacted because the PAC didn’t hold public debates into such spending of public money.
But those days are now a thing of the past as the PAC of the Sixth Parliament headed by the Deputy Speaker and Chairman of the committee, Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh has assured Sierra Leoneans that there will be “No more secrecy under my watch; the era of secrecy has passed”.
