Editorial No Malice Against GAC or Morlu, But..
In recent times, our attention, in terms of reporting the news, has been on the General Auditing Commission or GAC legislated as agency of government to check-mate all institutions of government, including the Executive Mansion, receiving and expending public funds. Of course, following its establishment, the man preferred to ‘kick all of the dusts’ at the GAC was the highly schooled, young and progressive John S. Morlu, II.
And as its main duties and functions, the General Auditing Commission conducted several audits, beginning with the HIPC audit involving the Ministries of Finance, Health, Defense, Public Works as well as Gender and Development, Education, Internal Affairs, the County Development Funds, among others. Certainly, tears, public insults and negative categorizations of Mr. Morlu and his GAC characterized the various audit reports which exposed administrative errors and mal-practices at most of these ministries and agencies of government covered by the initial audit exercises.
While the GAC was conducting these exercises and exposing whatever administrative errors and mal-practices, as well as those involved, very little or nothing at all did the public know about how funds and other opportunities received from the European Union, Government of Liberia and other institutions were expended or utilized by the General Auditing Commission for the past five and a half years.
Even the Liberian Legislature which has oversight responsibility, deliberately refused to know the GAC’s expenditure and how other activities were being executed. One primary reason for the Legislature’s ‘blind eye’ may have been the fear of being exposed by the GAC. That’s why we at the New Dawn-Liberia tried and tried to exert all efforts, in the interest of the Liberian public, to be abreast of the level of accountability and transparency within the GAC’s mandate, as well as its in-house operations, beginning with a communication from USAID raising a number of issues regarding the process.
Unfortunately, a few of our brothers at the Commission, including the Director of Communication misconstrued our objective as reporting anti-GAC or anti-John Morlu sentiments. We do, state emphatically here that we hold no malice or whatsoever against any Liberian public official or institution, and would publish nothing that such official or institution has not done.
And as a result of the misguided challenges and utterances of these GAC individuals, we have finally opted to go ‘full blast’ to publish documents available to us, but not authored by us, for public perusal as a way of determining the truth of the matter at the GAC. It is our fervent hope that following these publications, our ‘brothers’ at the GAC will begin ‘putting on their thinking caps’ in positively addressing the various issues being raised against the operations of the General Auditing Bureau.
