As Chair of the Senate special select committee tasked with heading the Social Security probe, Godwin Hulse is a private citizen under acute public pressure.
It is the pressure of expectation as the public looks to him to give them some straight talk about what happened to tens of millions of Social Security dollars invested in dubious schemes. So far, the second preliminary meeting of the committee has shown that the first $29 million in loans which members reviewed show that they are only backed by $6 million in guarantees and that's from a loan portfolio of more than $100 million.
Is this early finding, the previews of a disaster untold? Senator Hulse says it may be the tip of the iceberg.
Godwin Hulse, Senator
“We have a lot of work to do. It will take a fairly lengthy process until we’ve gone through it. And of course you know that the Senate select committee has the right by the motion to engage expertise. We will be engaging expertise to help in this process; the relevant expertise of attorneys and accountants as the case may be. We are managing the process so we are doing an overhaul to determine where we need to engage these expertise first of all and secondly when we do begin the hearings what are the relevant and proper adequate questions to ask. So this is a cursory look. But from a cursory look we may be saying that in relation to what would be considered the sound financial practices we were not satisfied that more than that amount in that volume had those sound financial practices and had followed the guidelines that the Social Security Investment Committee itself has.”
Alfonso Noble,
My comment on that is that its early on and you all are already finding these kind of discrepancies. The question is if it is worse?
Godwin Hulse,
“Well we cannot say that because we are just in the beginning of the process and we need to give the process the time to go through.”
“The Select Committee would not be so mad as to impute, imply, or suggest that the expertise resides in our hand. We are managing a process and therefore when we get to looking at it in-depth we will have to engage the required expertise to facilitate it. But I hasten to add that the process of the Senate investigation is one which lifts the level of our democracy. That is one of the places where it does belong; the investigative powers of the arm of the legislative cannot be downplayed.”
Alfonso Noble,
Can we as the public knowing that there are affiliations within the Senate, know that at the end of the day whenever you all come up with your findings that it will be very pointed?
Godwin Hulse,
“The very composition of the Senate select committee has its interest and therefore the comment that its not impartial and that its not independent are in a way moot points because by representing the government, the government’s interest in the process is represented. Hopefully the opposition will come onboard and the opposition’s interest will be represented. But it is a social partners initiative. We are leading the process. We continue to see it as our process. We continue to see it as the social partners being facilitated by the government and supported hopefully by the opposition.”
After preliminary, preparatory sessions are complete, the special select committee will hold public sessions in the National Assembly Chamber.