Govt sitting on its result card

Five months after presidential nod to the audit report for financial year 2014-15, ‎the federal government is reluctant to share the report of its first year in power with the Parliament and media fearing a major public backlash ahead of by-elections in Lahore and Lodhran and local government elections due to irregularities identified by the auditors, Pakistan Today has learnt.

Sources in Ministry of Finance told Pakistan Today that the audit report for year 2014-15 (FY 2013-14) was compiled in February this year and forwarded to the Finance Division by the office of the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) which was forwarded to the Prime Minister’s Office and from there to the President’s Secretariat for the president’s approval.

In April, acting president Raza Rabbani gave assent to the audit report and returned it to the Prime Minister’s Office. Till date, however, the audit report has not been laid before the National Assembly and the Senate.

AGP Rana Assad Amin confirmed to Pakistan Today that the president had given his consent to the report and it had been forwarded to the Parliamentary Affairs Ministry for presenting it to the National Assembly and Public Accounts Committee.

Under the parliamentary traditions, the audit reports are laid before the National Assembly and the Senate along with the Finance Bill in June every year. However, the PML-N government has changed this tradition.

When contacted, Press Secretary to the President Rao Liaquat Ali Khan confirmed that the acting president had assented to the Audit Report 2014-15 on April 16 this year and then returned to the Prime Minister’s Office.

A source in the Ministry of Finance, however, views that the audit report was being held deliberately as it had identified quite a few “glaring irregularities and violation of rules by the incumbent government”.

The source added that Finance Minister Ishaq Dar was himself making sure that a decision is taken over the report’s presentation in Parliament with his orders.

Upon asked for comments, Ministry of Finance Director-General Media Saeed Javed promised to get back after seeking version of the ministry. However, Javed neither picked repeated calls made on his phone nor made any comment over the audit report withheld.Analysts believe that the ‎government’s efforts to “conceal it’s wrongdoings” would backfire as Pakistani nation was cognizant of its rights and is “not in a mood to forgive”.

“Access to information and transparency are prerequisites for democracy as well as a key tool in the fight against corruption,” said Arshad H Abbasi, a noted expert on economic issues.

“The practitioners in the government may expect that we shall not see, or will forgive them, a bit of gluttony. But they can hardly expect us not to care when their gluttony causes them to vomit all over our shoes,” said Abbasi.

Sharing his own experience as a government servant, Abbasi said that the PML-N and PPP regimes never tolerated efforts in bureaucracy to ensure ‎transparency and accuracy. “When I was Planning Commission director I dared to setup real-time monitoring system to check quality, cost over-run and to ensure 100 percent transparency. Resultantly, I became a victim of the then Planning Commission chairman. So I preferred to tender my resignation,” he added.

Abbasi says the real-time audit battery, known as continuous details auditing, builds capability for financial information to be checked, shared and verified constantly for corruption, errors, fraud and inefficiencies.

“Most importantly, continuous audit helps identifies anomalies, analyse patterns, review trends and test controls. It also ensures the integrity of information, which will build analytical capacity of media and society, which vests power to people to participate in government decision making – the true definition of democracy in information age,” he added.

“Lack of access to information results in a non-participatory society in which political decision-making is not democratic. Real time monitoring and audit of projects allows individuals to exercise their political and civil rights in election processes, challenge or influence public policies, monitor the quality of public spending and demand accountability,” concluded Abbasi.