The liquidation of oversight and the right to the budget in the context of discrediting Court of Accounts reports

In countries that have adopted democracy, the right to the budget does not merely mean the public casting votes in periodic elections. The right to the budget carries a meaning that goes beyond granting authority. The right to the budget is an indicator of whether a country's regime is a democratic parliamentary system. Two important tools that show the implementation results of the Budget Law are the final accounts law and the Court of Accounts reports.

Although the quantity and variety of reports that the Court of Accounts submits to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) are significant, only the general statement of conformity is discussed in the Assembly. Furthermore, due to the heavy workload of the Planning and Budget Committee, where Court of Accounts reports are reviewed, this committee does not allocate time for them, and sometimes they are not discussed at all.

This situation shows that the TBMM is not exercising its right to the budget. In the Court of Accounts Law No. 6085, the purpose of oversight is stated as: providing reliable and sufficient information to the TBMM and the public regarding the activity results of public administrations as a requirement of the right to the budget, ensuring that public financial management is conducted in accordance with the law, protecting public resources, evaluating the performance of public administrations, and establishing and disseminating accountability and financial transparency.

Court of Accounts Law No. 6085: The reports submitted by the Court of Accounts to the TBMM are the general statement of conformity, the external audit general evaluation report, and the financial statistics evaluation report.

The TBMM does not effectively fulfill its function of monitoring and auditing budget implementations.

Additionally, the simultaneous discussion of the budget law and the final accounts law is one of the practices that prevents the effective use of the right to the budget.

The final accounts reviews and debates are what should be primarily discussed in the Planning and Budget Committee; however, these issues are not debated in the TBMM Budget Committee and are not shared with the public.

In this sense, the Assembly is not fulfilling its function of providing information; the issue of how and where the political power spends money, and whether it spends in accordance with the approved budget, is neither audited nor shared with the public. Instead, the focus is on the new year's budget. The effectiveness of the TBMM in preparing the new budget is already a subject of debate.

These documents, which show the results of budget implementation and contain important information regarding accountability, are not brought to the agenda in the committee.

As a result, it is observed that the final accounts bill and its annexes are not discussed or examined in the TBMM Planning and Budget Committee or the General Assembly.

In order for the budget committee and the TBMM to effectively fulfill their function of monitoring and auditing budget implementations, a permanent commission must be established to discuss Court of Accounts reports, and the procedures for this commission to review the reports must be created immediately.