Accusation against the forensic auditors

Apr 01, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
I read your response to my letter about your choice of headline. Yours is a very flawed argument. Additionally, you accused me of advancing a position that I did not advance. While I said was I am tired of reading all these leaked reports, never did I say or suggest that these shouldn’t be published. Editor, a whistleblower is someone who, through their own efforts, unearths wrongdoing and corruption and brings this to the attention of authorities and/or the media. A whistleblower is not one who is paid to investigate and provide findings to a competent authority, or those whom, through the positions of trust they hold in a government have access to these confidential reports, but then leak this information to the media. I am sure you are aware that there is something called the Official Secrets Act.
My call is for the President to deal with those in positions of trust who are obliged to uphold confidentiality, not those who unearth information that has not previously come to light and who report this to the authorities and the media. To allow government functionaries to leak information unchecked is a sign of weak government. And no one should tell me this is a violation of democracy. Would KN allow a member of its staff to continuously leak information to Guyana Times about the news stories it is working on for the next day’s publication? And don’t bring the argument that that KN staffer wouldn’t be leaking information about wrongdoing. The issue here is about the leaking of internal information, the decision about how and when to release it must be up to the competent authority.
So KN can stand by its definition all it wants. I stand by my position that I never requested that the President deal with whistleblowers. Nor did I ever suggest that newspapers shouldn’t publish articles based on leaked information.
Further I say no more!
Wesley Kirton

Editor’s note: These are Mr. Kirton’s words; “The President needs to bring down the hammer on those suspected of leaking these reports to the media.” Any reasonable mind will conclude by that Mr. Kirton doesn’t want to have these leaks, meaning then the leaks should not be in the newspapers. Mr. Kirton assumes that the leaks come from the people who were paid to do the audits as clearly stated in his letter above. The following words of Mr. Kirton are an unfair accusation against the auditors; “A whistleblower is not one who is paid to investigate and provide findings to a competent authority, or those whom, through the positions of trust they hold in a government have access to these confidential reports, but then leak this information to the media.” We trust that such an accusation is dismissed by the professional auditors for what it is – baseless

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