May 12, 2011Dear Sir,The governments of both the United Kingdom and the United States have long-standing and powerful mechanisms to check, monitor, influence and even regulate the activities and administration of government in those countries. These take the form of Parliamentary Select Committees in the UK, and congressional oversight committees in the US. Without going in to great detail about their functions, the two main categories of oversight are House of Commons Select Committees in the UK, and the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the US. Numerous subsidiary and ancillary committees with powers of critique and enforcement monitor and regulate the standards of governance in the UK and the US in specific areas of government (finance, security, administration, etc.).It is high time that at least one Parliamentary authority be established in Bermuda with powers similar to those in the US and the UK to perform similar functions of oversight of the activities of the Bermuda Government. As far as I know there is just one committee in Bermuda with such oversight powers, namely, the Public Accounts Committee. (I’m happy to be corrected on this if there are in fact other such bodies, apart from the Auditor General.) At the moment the only authority in Bermuda that monitors, assesses and passes judgement on the quality of its governance overall is the electorate — the people of Bermuda. But the people can only exercise their power to influence their government, based on their perception of the quality of its governance, every five years or so — at the ballot box.A Bermuda Parliamentary select committee authority would have supervisory powers to review, critique and modify government activities whenever it thought it was in the interests of good governance to do so. It would act as a guardian of good governance with only one constituency in mind, namely, the people of Bermuda, for their security, prosperity and welfare, and without regard to divisions of one kind or another inherent in the many differences that characterise the Bermuda community. However such an oversight authority might be structured, it would need to be, at the very least, independent of political bias, have forensic powers to examine and scrutinise the activities of individual government representatives under summons, and be required to report publicly on the results of any inquiry within a reasonable period. It should additionally have the authority to refer the results of any inquiry to the judiciary if it deemed that necessary, justifiable or desirable, to seek remedy for any reason.Government is, by good governance, supposed to guard us, the people, to keep our welfare. The Roman satirist Juvenal wrote almost 2,000 years ago: “But who is to guard the guards themselves?” At the moment there are virtually no uber-guardians to keep a continuous watch over the behaviour of Bermuda’s governmental guards on the hill. There need to be.GRAHAM FAIELLALondon, UK