It goes without saying that at a publicly traded company, a qualified audit opinion would result in the immediate dismissal of the CEO and CFO. What will happen here now that the Government received a not surprising qualified audit opinion from the new Auditor General (who they will have a much harder time shrugging off as a number crunching racist as they did her predecessor)?
Time will tell.
While generally popular, it has to be said that Finance Minister Paula Cox has been a colossal disappointment. She has never put her stamp on the Ministry, largely letting things run. She has not taken a pro-active role in building surpluses during the good times to carry us through when the inevitable downturns come. Instead we got an absurd budgeted increase in government revenues for 09/10 during a massive economic contraction.
It is laughable, delusional, embarrassing frankly, for her to even mention the economic collapse while talking about the qualified audit opinion as she did yesterday. That is sheer desperation.
The recession had nothing to do with the cruise ship pier running almost double budget, or any over-spending. It has had an impact no doubt on government revenues. But revenue shortfalls don't cause qualified opinions. Lack of documentation, unaccounted cost over-runs, capital projects built for far more than their construction costs do, or fraud do.
The Finance Minister's role is not to simply cut the checks for Ministers who either can't, or don't want to control costs and enforce budgets. The Premier of course being the prime offender here with his favourite contractor, money pit Music Festival, Love Festival and the like.
A qualified opinion is not something that the Finance Minister should welcome and attempt to bury in her characteristic empty pages of cliche filled nothingness.
This is not a minor issue. This was not unforeseen. This is not about institutions needing better internal controls. It's about not facilitating a culture which has dismissed established and worldwide standards of best practices and accountability as some great white political conspiracy. I hate the word 'enabler', but in this case it is entirely appropriate. The Finance Minister has been enabling the systematic collapse of Bermuda Government financial controls.
This has been building for years, and perhaps many people thought they could just dismiss it and say it didn't matter because the Government was collecting surplus revenues due to two unexpected expansions of the economy. Things still appeared ok on the surface to those who didn't want to scratch that surface.
The overspending (to put it kindly) has seriously impaired Bermuda's ability to weather an economic storm. The Finance Minister has been negligent in building a culture of accountability in Government, and standing up to rogue Ministers who either turn a blind eye, or, to take the sinister view, encourage massive capital project budget overruns.
This has to stop. The Finance Minister needs to take responsibility and either commit to standing up for the people of Bermuda instead of shirking her responsibility, or admit that she's not up to the position.
People across the political and economic spectrum held Paula Cox in very high regard and had high expectations of her for many years. Those same people are now expressing a deep disappointment in her performance and wondering just who in the Government is up to the task of running the Government in the best interests of the public.
