By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

OPPOSITION Leader Philip “Brave” Davis hopes to table an interim Public Accounts Committee report this month.

“I’m hoping to be able to lay an interim report in Parliament if not next sitting, definitely it will be ready for the following sitting,” he said yesterday.

“It will feature the work we have done to date and the obstacles we have encountered in being able to carry out our functioning.”

To some, the PAC has been rendered functionless this term because the Minnis administration has refused to respond to its information requests, interpreting former House Speaker Dr Kendal Major’s 2015 ruling as barring the committee from reviewing anything not brought to the House of Assembly by the auditor general.

House Speaker Moultrie has not resolved the controversy because he said Mr Davis has not yet raised the issue in Parliament.

“As I explained to the chairman of the PAC, I cannot as the presiding officer just appeal a ruling,” he said to the Tribune in January. “Someone has to make an application to me, stating the grounds upon which I should act to revise the decision and perhaps overturn it. It is their Speaker that made the ruling and I think the difficulty that they are having is that if they make an application and set out the particular grounds, they will feel they are undermining their own Speaker.”

Mr Davis has previously expressed a desire to investigate the more than $1 billion the government spent in the first six months of the 2017-2018 fiscal year. He also wants the PAC to investigate how contracts were awarded for repairing the Stephen Dillet Primary School ahead of the 2017-2018 school term.