Messrs K.D. Knight and John Junor, sitting members of Parliament for the People's National Party (PNP) and members of the House's Public Accounts Committee, have a point about the PAC's life soon coming to end.

Indeed, it is not long before the current Parliament will be dissolved to make way for the general elections, which Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller says she will call for August 27. Given that the life of the PAC ends with the life of the Parliament, Messrs Knight and Junor argue, it makes little sense for the committee to go ahead with its review of the current Auditor General's report. As Mr. Knight puts it, since the PAC would not complete its work and the examination would have to be taken up by the new Parliament, any effort now would be an "exercise in futility".

We do not see the issue in quite the same way as Messrs Knight and Junor we understand the gamesmanship being exercised by each side at this time. Both are seeking political advantage.

We are of little doubt, and the PAC's stand-in chairman, Mr. Mike Henry, will have a hard job convincing us otherwise, that he and the other members of the JLP would hope to unearth issues in the hearing that would be embarrassing to the Government. The PNP members want to avoid this.

The matters at stake, however, ought to transcend such partisan concerns, for membership of Parliament and sitting on its committees are about conducting the people's business. That job continues from the first sitting of Parliament when a member takes the oath until the last day when the legislature is dissolved.

Indeed, it is for good reasons why the sitting of the House is an open event, and why legislators eventually brought transparency to its committees. Parliamentarians, after all, act in the interest of their constituents and the wider community. The press also is allowed privilege in observing their interchange on the assumption that it amplifies their discourse to the wider public.

So, while it is important for formal reports representing the distilled conversations of the relevant committees to be prepared, of greater significance to us is to capture the immediate conversation, sans backroom bartering.

In that regard, we believe that it would have been in the interest of the public had the discussion of the Auditor General's report continued. It could not have been beyond the capacity of the PNP members to counter any apparent outrageous conclusions or interpretations placed on the Auditor General's findings, except if there was nothing more blatant than the truth.

Events, though, have gone as they have gone. And the episode, some might argue, is one point in an argument against proposals for a fixed election date - an early closing down of the functioning of Government in preparation for elections. Here it is that Jamaica has nearly two months to go before it votes, Parliament has time before its dissolution, yet the legislature has come to an almost standstill.

The situation would be worse, the opponents of fixed election date would probably argue. As the election cycle approaches, legislators and the political executive would become cautious and seek ways to avoid perusal of the people's business, lest the process becomes embarrassing.