Georgetown : The Parliamentary Opposition last night in the National Assembly passed the Fiscal Management and Accountability (Amendment) Bill 2013, in spite of a few of deficiencies pointed out by the Government side of the House.
The Bill, piloted by APNU’s Member of Parliament Carl Greenidge and passed on a 33-30 vote seeks to bring a number of entities listed as budget agencies under the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act (FMAA). These are: the Judicial Service, Public Service, Police Service, and Teaching Service Commissions; the Public Service Appellate Tribunal; the Supreme Court of Judicature; the Office of the Ombudsman; the Parliament Office and the Guyana Elections Commission.
Greenidge referred to the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC), a constitutional rights body as a ‘waste of time’.
But during the debate, Minister of Legal Affairs and Attorney General Anil Nandlall, pointing to the fact that last year Greenidge had brought a motion seeking to remove these entities from the FMAA Schedule and said that in effect, therefore, if the Bill is to be assented to, then those agencies will fall out of the purview and operational scope of the Act. He said this will therefore, mean that the Bill will have no connect to the principal Act that it is seeking to modify.
“The Bill seeks to amend the principal Act, but the Bill has no connection to this act because this Bill seeks to apply to set of agencies that Mr. Greenidge has removed from the operations of the principal Act. And therefore, this Bill has absolutely no nexus, is wholly irrelevant to the Principal Act because the only way this Principal Act has any relevance to any agency is if the agency is listed in the schedule. Mr. Greenidge has removed these agencies from the schedule and therefore he has removed them from the operational scope of Principal Act. This is why this Act should not even be considered,” the Minister said.
Minister of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh also pointed to the fact that the Bill is seeking to amend the constitution. “What we have before us is an attempt to amend the constitution, that has not received the unanimous support of this House and that has not gone through the conventional consideration of the Constitutional Reform Committee,” he said.
“What we have here taken together with the constitutional amendment bill, is an attempt to fundamentally alter the role of the responsibilities of branches of Government and in particular the executive and legislative as it relates to fiscal and financial responsibility,” he said.
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