THE AUDITOR GENERAL WITH A GRAIN OF SALT
18 April 2024
This is the statement issued by the PLP’s Chairman Fred Mitchell on the report laid on the table of the House of Assembly on 17 April 2024 about the Jubilee Games and the Carifta Games hosted by the Government of The Bahamas:
It is tiresome to do so but it bears repeating: be careful how newspapers rush to alarmist and tendentious headlines about public expenditure, without hearing the other side and causing us to rush to ill-founded judgments. When the facts are revealed, we are satisfied that it will be clear that the deliberate and destructive innuendo of public malfeasance by the newspapers, is misplaced and maliciously conceived.
Without getting into facts and figures, our supporters and Bahamians of goodwill should consider the following including some probative questions:
Did the newspapers ask the Minister who is responsible to Parliament for Sports for a comment, before printing the sensational headlines?
A similar question could be asked of the Auditor General, who would know that the principle in Bahamian administrative law is that where an authority proposes to make an adverse finding against an entity or person, the proposed finding ought to be put to the entity or person for that person or entity to respond.
Was that done in this case?
The public ought to be reminded that an audit is only a snapshot of what the Auditor found on the day or days they showed up for the audit.
No doubt the Auditor General is familiar with governmental budgetary practices. A notional figure is often put in a budget to create a line item in anticipation of multi-year expenditure. That therefore does not mean that when additional sums are allocated that there was an overspend. Such an allegation or conclusion would be misleading.
In light of what was released in this statement, one hopes that there is now a clearer understanding of what transpired. Our expectation is that the sensational headlines are the usual rush to ill-founded and sensational judgments, motivated only by the wish to sell newspapers and guided by the creed: do not let the truth interfere with a good story.
Number of hits for the week ending Saturday 20 April 2024 up to midnight: 510,363;
Number of hits for the month of April up to Saturday 20 April 2024 up to midnight: 1,477,857;
Number of hits for the year 2024 up to Saturday 20 April 2024 up to midnight: 6,872,360;