Introduction
Last Thursday, President Donald Ramotar swore in Mr Deodat Sharma as the country’s Auditor General. The good news is that one long-acting appointment has been brought to an end – Mr Sharma had been acting in the position of Auditor General for seven years. But that is where the positive ends. The real story is not the confirmation itself, although that raises some serious questions about how the country’s finances are supervised and overseen. It was the fact that the confirmation was done largely by stealth and without any prior announcement. The Constitution gives the power of general supervision over the Audit Office to the Public Accounts Committee, a key parliamentary body. Yet, the President did not think it courteous let alone necessary to inform or invite the Chairman of the PAC to the swearing in.
Our Constitution requires the President to appoint the Auditor General acting in accordance with the advice of the Public Service Commission. We should be able to assume that Mr Ramotar would have had the advice of the PSC chaired by Mr Carville Duncan, but how the PSC made that decision can only be speculated on. Indeed, such is the state of governance
