Bills for Acts to provide for oil drilling and the establishment of a Sovereign Wealth Fund together with guidelines on how the financial proceeds from the sale of mined oil in The Bahamas will be allocated were to be the focus of Parliamentary debate this past Wednesday, but a reported hacking of the Ministry of Tourism’s official website, Bahamas.com, cancelled all of that. Prime Minister Christie convened an emergency cabinet meeting to address this matter with potentially serious “national security implications” said the PM.

First up though was the Speaker’s ruling on the status of the probe of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in light of the refusal of Co Chairs Algernon Allen and Cynthia Pratt to appear before the PAC and a subsequent legal opinion rendered by the Attorney General that the PAC probe was “illegally improper” because the report was not tabled in the House of Assembly.

In the legal opinion, the Attorney General questioned the legality of the PAC Chair directing the Auditor General and the PAC requesting a document (the audit of the UR small homes repair program) that was not tabled in the House of Assembly.

The Speaker ruled that the PAC could not proceed further with their probe into the Urban Renewal Small Homes Repair Program until such time as the audit had been tabled in the House of Assembly.

He said that certain “procedural errors” influenced his decision and had he received a copy of the audit, he would have tabled it without delay, giving the PAC proper guidelines to proceed with the probe. This was the law for many years in The Bahamas.

Algernon Allen called a press conference following the Speaker’s ruling to say that the ruling was a vindication of the work of Urban Renewal. He characterized the whole PAC hearing as “improper,” a “Kangaroo Court” that smacked of “political mischief” and undermined the good work of Urban Renewal. He also said that Urban Renewal “cannot be used as a political lynch mob and should not be used as such.”

Several contractors have either filed law suits against the government in the wake of the Auditor General’s report or are contemplating the same but Mr. Allen told the media that he is “discouraging“ such actions because in the end, the government will have to pay and law suits are unhelpful to the objectives of Urban Renewal.

Saint Anne’s MP and Chairman of the PAC Hubert Chipman disagreed with the Speaker’s ruling and opined that the speaker’s ruling rendered the PAC “useless.”

Several Ministers congratulated the students of the Anatol Rodgers High School for winning an international hotel challenge in Orlando, Florida and the local Build a bridge competition.

The Nurse’s association was congratulated on their 52nd anniversary. They are affiliated with the International College of Nursing, the Royal College of Nursing and the Commonwealth Nurse’s Association. The President of the association is Paulette Cash.

Education Minister Hon. Jerome Fitzgerald announced that a brand new Freedom of Information Act 2015 draft was completed and will be released for public consultation on Friday, 15th May 2015. Interested persons can access the draft bill on the Ministry of Education’s website and the government’s official website.

Prime Minister Christie updated the House on the regional summit on climate change that he attended as CARICOM Chair on Saturday, 9th May 2015 in Martinique. In attendance was French President Hollande who will play host to the COP21 Summit on Climate Change to be held in Paris in December 2015. Prime Minister Christie again called for access to loans at concessionary rates and independent of GDP considerations for capital development for energy-related projects.