2004News

Tonty rejects audit

Senator Tonty Rutinel, who was recently in the spotlight for denouncing a series of irregularities in the Chamber of Accounts and requesting an audit after RD$28 million went missing, has told the press he considers the proposed audit of his Commission for the Congressional Reform to be absurd. He told Miguel Figueroa of El Caribe that the commission does not handle any money, and that it was the lack of such knowledge that prompted the Chamber of Accounts judges to request such an investigation. He promised to present the press with an extensive document that would define the position of the commission. In his widely-read column ?De Buena Tinta,? journalist Adriano Miguel Tejada says that this is the country of the ?vice versa.? Citing General Pedro Santana as the instigator of that idea, Tejada says that the accused have become the accusers and the ones who are down soon find themselves on top. He follows that by citing a famous speech by Monsignor Fernando Arturo de Merino at the inauguration of Buenaventura Baez in 1865. Now, he says, after surviving a broadside of accusations of procedure violations and other misdeeds that in any other country would have forced the legislative body to suspend all of its members until an independent body could determine the veracity of the charges, the worthy Chamber of Accounts plans to audit the modernization program directed by Senator Rutinel, the ringing voice of the accusations against the judges. Is this a case of the hunter becoming the hunted, or merely one of nonsense taken to the highest level? Tejada says that he would like to think this is a joke, because while it is true that everything in this world is subject to scrutiny, this turnaround seems to be vengeance of the worst kind.