Federico Humbert avoids confronting legislators
As part of his electoral aspirations, the Comptroller General of the Republic, Federico Humbert, seeks to take political advantage with the regulation of donations from the National Assembly, despite the warnings of unconstitutionality, denounced some critics.
- Jason Morales
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- - Actualizado: 10/3/2017 - 02:20 pm
As part of his electoral aspirations, the Comptroller General of the Republic, Federico Humbert, seeks to take political advantage with the regulation of donations from the National Assembly, despite the warnings of unconstitutionality, denounced some critics.
Humbert has insisted to benefit legislators, pointing out that he would be willing to design a new handbook for regular donations of the Assembly, should the Supreme Court declare the unconstitutionality of the handbook prepared by his office.
"If the Court rules that it is illegal, I would prepare another handbook the next day", threatened Humbert.
The response of the comptroller is attributed to his intentions to get along well with legislators and not go ahead and investigate the possible corruption acts in donations, denounced lawyer Miguel Antonio Bernal.
Bernal said that "the Comptroller is not doing anything but evade responsibilities and compliance with law 32 governing the Comptroller´s Office because he is not able to fulfil the responsibilities that correspond to this kind of situations".
In its article 55, law 32 sets forth "among the functions of the Comptroller is to order investigations to determine whether the management of funds and other public property has been made correctly and in accordance with the established rules".
Even the political Constitution of Panama is clear in stating in its article 280, relating to the functions of the Comptroller's Office, which is the comptroller who should "maintain all national accounts".
"Since he took office, he has done nothing, but now, sinnce he wishes to parttake in the dance of the millions with his legislator friends, he pretends to go unnoticed and fail to do what he must do therefore he should resign", said Bernal.
Moreover, Humbert said to ignore whether he has the competent authority to investigate the management of legislators and said that the Public Prosecutor's Office should be the one that should request an audit at the National Assembly, and for this purpose he has sent notes to the Court and to the Office of the Administration.
However, for lawyer Bernal, "these would be excuses and pretexts to evade his responsibilities", because "the law empowers him to do that and more; never before had there been in Panama a comptroller so incompetent".
In this sense, the former Minister of Economy and Finance Frank De Lima stated that it is the duty of the comptroller, by constitutional mandate, to monitor the use of public funds and all the public money, among them, that which is assigned to the National Assembly for supposedly supporting poor people.
At the same time, lawyer Ernesto Cedeño said: "If you think that, with the version by the comptroller that he does not have to investigate them, and that it has to be the Public Ministry, he is undermining the strength because audits should be carried out by the comptroller". "It's like not undertaking a deep investigation so as to ultimately declare that there were no results", he said.
Even when other auditing bodies have already asked the Supreme Court to declare the regulation granting donations to the National Assembly as unconstitutional.
This would be the case of attorney general of the nation, Kenya Porcell, who asked to declare decree 441-2016- DMySC of October 25, 2016, unconstitutional from the Comptroller's Office, which approved the document titled "Requirements and controls to provide support in the National Assembly of Panama".
On the other hand, yesterday Prosecutor of Accounts, Guido Rodríguez, asked the Comptroller to audit donations and contracts in the National Assembly during the years 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Meanwhile, legislator Ana Matilde Gómez explained that the Comptroller should never regulate gifts and the Ministry of Economy and Finance should eliminate them.
Gomez also said that "any donation is oblivious to the role of the Assembly".
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