بســم اللّـه الرّحمـن الرّحيــم
Honorable Ministers, respectable members of the Parliament, Honorable MP’s of Asian Region, and our very able Speaker of People’s Majlis Honorable Abdulla Shahid, efficient Deputy Speaker Ahmed Nazim;
As salaam Alaikum and a very good morning to you.
It’s a beautiful day today and a very sunny day compared to yesterday. So I hope you are enjoying God’s blessings.
Today, the parliamentarians and the parliament of the Maldives is graduating, is going to another level where they will be talking about how clean the government could be, how you could eliminate corruption, how true we could be spending the people’s money, the donors’ money. These will be discussed in the coming conference.
Today, the parliamentarians are discussing with other parliamentarians of the Asia region to learn from each other. We are gathered here, for the Asia Regional Association for the Public Accounts Committees, endorsed by the representative of public accounts to provide a common platform to share and learn the best practices of member parliaments to improve the quality and performance and ensure that tax payers get value for their money.
Towards this end, ARAPAC shall provide a forum to endorse global knowledge, and experience, and ultimately fight corruption and promote good governance among the parliamentarians. And I believe good governance and clean government are the basic principles of a true democracy.
In this gathering, members will learn to work with Auditor Generals so as to improve the effectiveness of both the Auditor and the Public Accounts Committees. These will be lessons learned and ways for moving forward, build relationships with Supreme Audit institutions. I’m very confident that all the members of this important gathering will put your effort to improve the performance of public accounts committees, which in turn will benefit the people of the countries. And I hope the participants will share their best practices and will be harmonizing and standardizing the work of public accounts committees across the continent.
I also believe that the public accounts committees must ensure that they maintain the best workforce within each country and accept that it is a necessity to communicate with all stakeholders at all levels. Hence the lessons learned from all countries will be shared with the public accounts committees and will be able to give recommendations to the government, to make a balanced plan to reduce deficit over the next decade.
I sincerely hope today’s parliamentarians are moving in the right direction. The greatest human achievement and success of any nation depends on sharing experience and accepting mistakes and reforming them.
No people are perfect; and no government is perfect. Opinions differ and so does the experience of each of us. But the real truth in a true democracy is listening to its people, showing them the truth and the reality, and being transparent. Parliament members are true representatives of the people; therefore they must never forget what the people of their constituents need. The desires of the people must be expressed in the parliament. If the parliamentarians respect the rights of the people; nation building will be an easy partnership which is built with the participation of the people represented in the parliament and working honestly and sincerely with the constitutionally elected government.
Governments must always be advised by the parliament, by these committees. And if the governments make mistakes it must be pointed out to them by these auditors. And if the governments do not listen, actions must be taken towards those involved in the government and that’s the direct, best, right way to go forward for any nation.
I wish all a very successful conference. May God bless Maldives.
Thank you.