THE legality of the Education ministry’s decision to repeatedly award contracts for legal services to one particular lawyer remains in doubt, auditor-general Odysseas Michaelides told minister Costas Kadis on Wednesday.
In reply to an angry letter the Education minister had sent Michaelides on Tuesday, accusing him of presenting inaccurate and misleading facts, releasing the contents of classified correspondence between the two men to the press, and “questioning the minister’s integrity”, the auditor-general insisted that, Kadis’ indignation notwithstanding, questions of legality remain.
The letters were the latest instalment in an escalating war of words between the two, with Michaelides dismissing the minister’s assertion that a lawyer was awarded contracts for legal opinions without an open tenders process due to the urgency of the issue at hand as mere excuses, pointing out that, a year on, the supposedly urgent matter has yet to be addressed.
“At no point, and in no letter, was the integrity of the Education minister challenged,” Michaelides wrote.
“We challenge, with evidence backing our claims, the legality of the ministry’s handling of the matter, which, as long as you refuse to order a probe to identify those responsible, constitutes your own handling.”
The auditor-general added that invoking urgency in order to circumvent the obligation for open and transparent procedures, in the absence of such urgency, constitutes abuse of the term.
“Another of the three issues [for which the minister had cited ‘an urgent need for legal assistance’] was eventually tackled by non-legal ministry bureaucrats,” he added, proving that Kadis’ request to be allowed to award a contract without an open invitation of tenders was “baseless and not evidence-backed”.
Michaelides also noted that, instead of requesting approval from the attorney-general for these derogations from due process in advance, “you notified him seven months later”.
On another front, which triggered a separate string of letters, Michaelides fired back at Kadis’ defence of the ministry’s handling of teachers’ in-class time.
Repeatedly challenging the rules of teachers securing exemptions from teaching time in exchange for undertaking seemingly menial tasks, Michaelides called for a comprehensive study on teaching times, based on best-practices employed in countries with high-performing educational systems.
This drew Kadis’ ire, who replied that such matters are extremely sensitive and require delicate handling, complaining that, in his letters, Michaelides made excerpts of Kadis’ letters, deemed ‘classified’, public.
“The Audit Service opted to make its views public on a serious issue, which your ministry has for years refused to address in any way,” Michaelides replied, adding insult to injury by releasing this letter to the press, too.
“Indeed, transparency and informing the public is the only tool available to a Service with no executive powers, mandated with conducting independent audits and informing the public of its findings.”
Regarding the classified nature of the Education minister’s latest letter, Michaelides once more accused Kadis of abusing the term.
“There was nothing classified in its contents,” he argued.
“The designation was simply in line with the ministry’s traditional stance of adopting fully untransparent practices. In any case, we completely disagree with the argument that, because you categorised your letter as ‘classified’, we had an obligation to do so with our letter, too, thus keeping the public in the dark on a serious issue relating to the terms of employment of 12,000 state employees.”
Purportedly trying to end the public row, the Education ministry later pressed the “transparency” point further.
“Both the Education ministry and the minister stand by the contents and spirit of their earlier letter, dated July 26,” the statement said.
“We are fully opposed to the practice adopted by Auditor General Odysseas Michaelides, who, in the name of transparency, nullifies and slanders the work and role of an entire ministry. We oppose this ‘globally unprecedented’ stance.”
The ministry argued that “further public confrontation and misguided transparency no longer does the public a service, but tarnishes institutions and divides society”.
