Gold Before Guns

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦EDITORIAL♦ June  2026

Gold Before Guns: The Real Story Behind Guyana’s Arms Crisis

Thirty-three smuggled AK-47s have reignited fears of a Venezuelan invasion plot. The more uncomfortable explanation is already embedded in Guyana’s own gold economy — and in the officials who keep it running.

Former Assistant Commissioner of Police Paul Slowe was right this week to call the discovery of 33 smuggled AK-47s — ten on the Corentyne in May, twenty-three at Schoonard three weeks later, all but one stripped of their serial numbers — a national security emergency rather than an ordinary policing matter. He was right, too, that the answer runs through Interpol, the United States’ Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and an honest accounting of who inside the state may have let the shipments through. Where the public conversation has gone wrong is in the theory it has chosen to chase.

An anonymous defense and security source told Demerara Waves this week that the rifles are most plausibly the leading edge of a Venezuelan hybrid-warfare campaign: sleepers embedded among an estimated five thousand Venezuelan men already working across Guyana, positioned to “sow chaos and disorder” ahead of the International Court of Justice’s year-end ruling on the 1899 Arbitral Award. It is a dramatic theory, and not an impossible one, given that Guyana Defence Force patrols have already taken fire along the Cuyuni River and a string of unexplained bombings — the GPL substation, the Ruimveldt police station, a Regent Street gas station blast that killed a child — remain unsolved. But it asks Guyanese to believe that interim President Delcy Rodríguez, mid-negotiation with Washington over reopening Venezuela’s mining sector to foreign capital, would gamble that relationship on a covert smuggling run through Georgetown’s own wharves.

R.Evan Ellis, the U.S. Army War College’s Latin America research professor who has tracked the Essequibo dispute since well before last year’s referendum scare, offers a more disciplined read of the same facts. The guns, he argues, are more plausibly being moved by criminal networks — Venezuelan, Brazilian, Colombian — fleeing enforcement pressure now bearing down on them across the region, not by a state plotting an invasion it cannot win. Neither Rodríguez nor her brother Jorge, who chairs Venezuela’s National Assembly, has any incentive to torch a fragile opening to Washington over Essequibo right now. That distinction matters, because it points to where Guyana’s actual vulnerability lives: not in Caracas’s intentions, but in its own gold economy.

Guyana has watched this mechanism before, only from a different direction. When Brazil’s government moved against the garimpeiros occupying Yanomami land, the miners did not go home; they scattered across the Guiana Shield, into Venezuela, Suriname, French Guiana, and Guyana’s own interior. Venezuela’s troops are now running the identical operation in reverse, clearing armed groups out of the Las Claritas gold fields in Bolívar state — the same district that borders both Guyana and Brazil — as part of Caracas’s own push to reopen its mining sector to foreign investors. There is no reason to expect the men displaced from those fields will behave any differently than the garimpeiros did. The only real question is whether Guyana is a harder landing zone than it was last time, or an easier one.

The evidence says easier. Long before these rifles surfaced, Venezuelan-linked traders were already operating inside the illicit gold economy running through Guyana’s southern border regions, including Region 9, with a level of comfort that should embarrass any functioning regulator.

Gold of unverifiable origin does not cross a border and arrive at the Guyana Gold Board on its own paperwork; it requires officials and licensing bodies willing to look past the obvious questions, or willing to supply the documentation that converts smuggled ore into certified “local production.”

That is not a hypothetical for this news platform  It is the same institutional posture this media-source has spent months documenting around Mazoa Hill and Marudi. An arms pipeline riding on top of an already-tolerated gold pipeline is not a second national security failure. It is the same failure, with a body count attached.

This is what makes Slowe’s diagnosis half right and too generous by half. Guyana’s security apparatus is not simply under-resourced against a sophisticated foreign adversary. It has spent years declining to police a smuggling economy that was already running through its own ports, mining districts, and licensing offices, and is now expressing alarm that the same corridors are moving rifles as well as ore. Tracing serial numbers with Interpol’s help, as Slowe recommends, is necessary. It will not explain why the corridor existed in the first place, or who benefited from keeping it open.

The official response so far offers little reassurance that anyone intends to find out. The Home Affairs Minister’s response to the busts amounted to “still assessing,” and her predecessor offered nothing beyond a refusal to comment. President Ali has promised only that regional and international partners will be brought into the investigation, with no timeline given and no lead agency named, and no answer yet to the opposition’s basic question of how the weapons cleared a port that, by the government’s own admission, still lacks the scanners to catch them. Parliament, for its part, has not asked a single public question about how a cross-border gold-and-arms network operates inside Guyana with this much room to move.

Until it does, Guyana’s national security emergency will remain exactly what successive administrations have allowed it to become: a crisis imported through channels the state itself left open, and shows no apparent urgency to close.

— The 592 Guardian Editorial Board

A Manufactured Shortage: ExxonMobil, Government, and the Failure to Prepare Guyana’s Workforce

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM JUNE 2026

A Manufactured Shortage: ExxonMobil, Government, and the Failure to Prepare Guyana’s Workforce

ExxonMobil’s admission that it is struggling to find sufficient skilled Guyanese workers should not be mistaken for an unfortunate surprise. It is the predictable outcome of a development model in which both the operator and the State—Guyana’s 50 percent profit partner—failed to prepare for the very scale of transformation they eagerly pursued.

After nearly a decade of oil production planning and six years since first oil, ExxonMobil is only now commissioning a baseline study to assess workforce capacity.

 

That exercise, while useful, comes far too late. The scale of Guyana’s offshore resources was never a mystery. From the early discovery phase, it was clear that multiple FPSOs, complex subsea systems, and a highly technical operational environment would demand a deep and continuously replenished pool of skilled labor.

Yet neither ExxonMobil nor the Government of Guyana treated workforce development as an urgent, front-loaded priority. Instead, both appeared content to focus on the inflow of revenues while underestimating—or outright neglecting—the foundational inputs required to sustain production at scale.

The Government’s role in this failure is particularly stark. As a direct beneficiary of oil profits and the steward of national development, it had both the incentive and the authority to align education, training, and labor policies with the demands of the emerging petroleum sector. Seven years was more than sufficient time to expand technical institutes, modernize curricula, fund specialized training programs, and establish structured pipelines into the industry.

That did not happen at the necessary pace or scale.

Instead, Guyana is now confronting a tightening labor market where demand is outstripping supply, forcing companies to compete for a limited pool of qualified workers. The consequences extend beyond the oil sector.

The very Dutch Disease dynamics now being cautiously referenced by ExxonMobil—where one industry cannibalizes talent from others—are being actively set in motion by this shortage.

Guyana now faces a convergence of pressures: an accelerating production schedule, a tightening labor market, and the risk of economic imbalance. ExxonMobil’s study may provide useful data, but data alone will not resolve a structural deficit that has been years in the making.

Healthcare, education, construction, and public administration are all vulnerable to losing skilled personnel to higher-paying oil and gas opportunities.

This is not merely a labor issue; it is a structural economic risk that threatens to distort national development.

 ExxonMobil’s data reveals the complexity of the situation. While 68 percent of the workforce is Guyanese and some 1,800 offshore workers have been trained to international standards, the company still reports increasing difficulty in sourcing qualified personnel. This highlights a critical gap between participation and proficiency. Guyanese workers are present, but the pipeline of advanced technical expertise remains too shallow for the industry’s accelerating demands.

It is also telling that this moment of reckoning coincides with stricter enforcement of local content requirements.

It is also telling that this moment of reckoning coincides with stricter enforcement of local content requirements.

The Government’s push toward a 60 percent threshold has effectively forced a confrontation with realities that should have been addressed years ago.

What is now framed as a labor shortage is, in truth, a planning deficit.

 Both ExxonMobil and the Government must now confront their shared responsibility. The company cannot credibly claim surprise at constraints it had the data to anticipate, and the Government cannot position itself as a passive regulator when it is an active partner in the venture.

The path forward requires more than retrospective analysis. It demands coordinated action between the government, the private sector, and educational institutions. Targeted scholarships, expanded technical training, apprenticeship programs, and international partnerships must be scaled rapidly and strategically. Crucially, these efforts must extend beyond oil and gas to ensure that other sectors are not hollowed out in the process.

Corrective action is still possible, but it will require urgency and coordination that have so far been lacking.. At the same time, deliberate policies are needed to protect other sectors from being stripped of talent.

Guyana’s oil wealth was always going to test the country’s institutional capacity. What is now evident is that both the operator and the State underestimated the complexity of that test.

As Guyana stands on the brink of unprecedented economic transformation, the lesson is clear. Resource wealth alone does not guarantee development. Without early investment in people—the most critical resource of all—even the most lucrative opportunities can expose the fragility of a nation’s foundation.

The result is a labor shortage that is neither accidental nor unavoidable. It is manufactured—born of delayed planning, misplaced priorities, and a collective failure to recognize that human capital is the true engine of any resource economy.

Seven years later, Guyana is paying the price for that oversight.

 

ENTER THE POLITICAL KINGDOM

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ SPECIAL FEATURE ♦ JUNE 2026.

ENTER THE POLITICAL KINGDOM.— MOSES BHAGWAN

Moses Bhagwan and the Memory of a Nation

Moses Bhagwan has lived long enough to know that history is never as neat as the textbooks make it seem. It arrives in fragments, in clashes of memory, in the stubborn persistence of people who refuse to let their stories be erased.

 His memoir, Enter the Political Kingdom, carries that same spirit: part witness account, part political chronicle, and part personal testament to a life spent inside Guyana’s most challenging struggles.

Bhagwan is not writing from the margins. He is writing from the center of the storm.

The publisher describes him as a descendant of indentured laborers whose path moved from rural beginnings into the thick of political life, across the PPP, the PYO, the Indian Political Revolutionary Associates, and the WPA. That journey alone gives the book its force. It is the story of one man, yes, but it is also the story of a country trying to find itself.

The Making Of A Political Voice

What makes Bhagwan’s story compelling is not only the scope of his political involvement, but the continuity of his purpose.

He was there in the years when Guyana’s political divisions hardened, when ideals collided with power, and when the promise of independence had to be defended from disappointment and distortion. He moved through those years not as a passive observer, but as an active participant with convictions that clearly outlasted the momentary applause of politics.

The memoir, as described by the publisher, does not shy away from the country’s sharpest political ruptures. It engages the original split in the PPP, the rise of authoritarian rule, and the assassination of Walter Rodney — events that still shape Guyana’s political memory and public argument.

These are not ornamental details. They are the bones of the story. Bhagwan does not treat them like museum pieces;he reignite their flame

Personal History, A Public Record

One of the book’s most affecting threads is its attention to the human side of political life. The publisher notes the importance of Bhagwan’s wife, Samia, whose presence steadies the memoir through hardship, exile, and loss. That detail matters because it reminds readers that politics is never only about meetings, manifestos, and movements. It is also about the private endurance that allows public struggle to continue.

This gives the memoir a different texture. It is not a stiff account of offices held and statements issued. It is a living record, shaped by sacrifice, loyalty, and the long discipline of believing in something larger than oneself. Bhagwan’s life, as presented in the book, suggests that political conviction is most meaningful when it survives the storms that test it.

 Why The Book Stands Out

There is a reason Enter the Political Kingdom  deserves attention beyond the circles that already know Bhagwan’s name. It offers readers an insider’s view of Guyana’s political development from a man who helped shape it and carry it. For younger readers, it is a route into the past without the filter of simplification. For older readers, it is a reminder of what was fought for, what was lost, and what remains unresolved.

More than that, the memoir speaks to a larger need: the need to preserve memory before it is smoothed over by convenience. In a political culture where too much is forgotten too quickly, Bhagwan’s account stands as a deliberate act of remembrance. It insists that the struggles of the past still matter because they helped define the present.

A Book Worth Opening

Moses Bhagwan: Enter the Political Kingdom is not just a memoir.

It is a document of struggle, a portrait of political conviction, and a reminder that nationhood is built by people willing to stay in the fight.

It has the intimacy of personal memory and the breadth of public history, which is precisely why it belongs in the hands of readers who care about Guyana’s journey.

This is the kind of book that invites reflection, debate, and admiration. It is also the kind of book that asks to be read with attention. Moses Bhagwan has given us not only a life story, but a window into the making of a political age.

Available on Amazon – just click the link below :

https://a.co/d/0dM2Bkcd

More money for Guyanese: Healing oil or Snake oil

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ ACCOUNTABILITY ♦ INTEGRITY♦ TRUTH

OP-ED                                                  BY :GHK LALL-JUNE 2026

More money for Guyanese: Healing oil or Snake oil

I like it.  More money for Guyanese workers.  Not private sector minimum wage workers, regrettably.  If any local workers are due more money, private sector (and public service) minimum wage workers stand out.  More money is for Guyanese in the oil industry.  Well, that’s the call, with PPP Govt Minister Vickram Bharrat doing the honors. A timely push from the government.  But as Guyanese know better than me -waan haan caan klap.  How will the oil companies and other entities, all foreign, respond to this significant government call?  I foresee a few, ah, hiccups.  Some sneezing to cause watery eyes and runny noses.  I live with allergies, so I recognize the triggers.  More money for Guyanese is a trigger, pollen shower.

More money for Guyanese workers in Guyana’s oil industry means all the companies, local and foreign, have to shell out for cash. 

The bottom line gets thinner.  Nowhere near red.  But not as green.  Not as many greenbacks to export to U.S. banks.  Not as much for local companies keeping their stashes at home. 

It has been hailed rather heartily that people are a company’s best assets.  That is, until money matters surface and get in the way.  More money, especially more pay, has historically led to bad friends and bad blood.  Simply ask Guyanese luminaries Lincoln Lewis and Seepaul Narine.  Poor Seepaul!  Even he own peeple in de PPP givin he haad kyaad fuh he peeple in de fields.  More money to be paid by foreign companies to local workers, so they are at a comparable level with their expatriate neighbors, is going to cause those companies to wince.  And, once they have to pony up, that may mean that local companies with local workers could be compelled to do something.  Not necessarily the same, but something more in the envelope.

I am trying to get ahead of foreign oil companies’ reactions.  To help my fine friend, VP Jagdeo, I have some good ones for him to ponder.  Years of experience is a walkover.  I walkover specific experience (yessir!)  Guyanese have six years under their belt.  Tick that box.  But there is that animal called equivalent qualifications.  How measured?  By whom?  Leave that box for now.  Then, there are those intangibles that PPP Govt agents have used in domestic public service arenas of recruitment, promotion, compensation: team player, leadership skills, organizational asset.  Any of these can be a weight that slows down the rate of pay growth for Guyanese workers.  Then, there’s that big, bad, one that’s both tangible and intangible: Evaluation Report.  Tangible because it’s usually on paper.  Intangible because it’s the product of something in the evaluator’s head.  A fine kettle of scorpions, that is.

Which right-minded foreign company executive, manager, willingly forks out millions more for local workers? 

However, deserving, overdue, they may be?  Business is a cold-blooded reptile.  Never about the milk of human kindness.  It’s capitalism, not Christianity.  What’s the edge, the bludgeon, that expatriates calling the shots have?  Make the evaluation unconscionably, improperly, tough, and few are the local workers that measure up.  Don’t have what it takes. 

At bottom, not qualifying for the kind of lovely money of which Minister Bharrat gushed so splendidly.  From the offshore oil rigs, the S-o-S comes: Georgetown -there’s a problem.  Few Guyanese workers are up to scratch.  How many Bobby Gossais can there be in an oil yard?  Translation: few of them have earned the right to more money.  Definitely not anywhere in the vicinity of any equality with highly-skilled, highly qualified, and highly compensated (and highly-cherished) foreign imports.  Before fellow Guyanese, I plead: don’t shortchange that abbreviation in brackets.

I welcome more moolah for Guyanese oil industry workers.  Has to be an industry now, with a million daily near happening.  Meanwhile, I remember inflation.  Apparently, PPP Govt fears have been tamed.  Thanks for the corroborating stats, Dr. de la Cruz.  Nonoil Guyanese will fall farther behind, have so survive.  Somehow.

SEEDS OF DECEIT

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THE 592 GUARDIAN

INDEPENDENT♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ♦GTOWN  GUYANA 

EDITORIAL

SEEDS OF DECEIT:

How a $54 Billion Supplementary Bill

Exposes the Ali Administration’s Fiscal Fiction

Four months. That is all it took for Guyana’s largest-ever national budget to run dry — or so the Ali administration now asks us to believe. The President tours the Dominican Republic press circuit proclaiming Guyana the region’s anchor of fiscal responsibility, even as his government returns, hat in hand, with a $54 billion supplementary request so vague in its particulars that it raises a question far graver than incompetence: is this the oil-funded war chest for the Local Government Elections?

THE EDITORS  •  592 GUARDIAN  •   JUNE 2026

I.THE IMPLAUSIBILITY IS THE MESSAGE

On 26 January 2026, the National Assembly passed a record-breaking national budget. The Ali administration marketed it as a monument to transformational governance — the material proof that oil wealth was being translated into generational uplift. The numbers were staggering. The rhetoric was soaring. President Ali spoke of planting ‘forests of opportunity that will shelter generations to come.’ The international press was invited to witness Guyana’s arrival as a serious fiscal actor.

By May 2026 — roughly sixteen weeks later — the same administration had returned to the National Assembly with a supplementary appropriation bill seeking more than $54 billion in additional spending authority.

Let that sink in.

In the time it takes a secondary school student to complete a single term, Guyana’s government exhausted whatever buffer it had built into a historic spending plan. And not by a small margin. Fifty-four billion dollars is not a rounding error. It is not an emergency provision for a natural disaster or a regional economic shock. It is a sum that demands a full accounting — of what was miscalculated, what was deliberately omitted from the original budget, and what new priorities have emerged that are so urgent they cannot wait for the next fiscal cycle.

Instead, the nation has received vagueness. Generalities. Political boilerplate

II.THE COMPETENCE QUESTION CANNOT BE AVOIDED

There are two possible explanations for a government returning for a $54 billion supplementary appropriation within four months of passing its largest-ever budget. The first is incompetence. The second is dishonesty. Neither inspires confidence.

If the explanation is incompetence — if the Ministry of Finance and the administration’s technocrats genuinely failed to anticipate spending needs that materialized within a single quarter — then we are confronted with a profound indictment of the government’s planning capacity. Budget preparation in Guyana is not an ad hoc exercise. It involves months of ministry submissions, macroeconomic modelling, revenue projections, and Cabinet deliberation. The entire apparatus of the state is mobilized to produce the document that the government then presents to the nation as evidence of its stewardship.

If that document is wrong by $54 billion inside of sixteen weeks, one of the following must be true: the projections were wildly inaccurate; the assumptions underpinning the budget were known to be unrealistic when they were made; or the government is spending in areas it did not disclose to the National Assembly or the public. Any of these scenarios constitutes a failure of governance at the highest level.

President Ali presents himself internationally as the steward of a sophisticated oil economy, a leader who understands ‘deliberate diversification’ and ‘permanent transformation.’ His administration cannot simultaneously claim that competence while being unable to project spending needs four months into the future.

III. THE VAGUENESS IS NOT ACCIDENTAL

The opacity surrounding the supplementary bill is, this Editorial Board submits, the most damning feature of the entire exercise. In a functioning democracy, a supplementary appropriation of this scale would be accompanied by granular detail: which line items are being augmented and why; what original projections proved wrong; which projects are being accelerated; and which emergent obligations necessitate additional spending.

What Guyanese have received instead is the political equivalent of a blank cheque.

Vagueness in public finance is never neutral. It is a choice. Governments that are spending in the public interest invite scrutiny because scrutiny validates their claims. Governments that are spending for political purposes obscure details because exposure would reveal the true beneficiaries. The Ali administration’s refusal to provide itemized justifications for $54 billion in additional expenditure — in an election year — is not an administrative oversight. It is a red flag of the highest order.

The nation is owed specific answers to the following questions, and this Board demands they be answered on the floor of the National Assembly and in public written submissions to the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee:

THE QUESTIONS THIS ADMINISTRATION MUST ANSWER

1.  Which specific budget lines are being supplemented, by how much, and why did original projections fail?

2.  What procurement processes, if any, will govern the expenditure of these additional funds?

3.  Are any of these funds earmarked for infrastructure projects in constituencies targeted in the upcoming Local Government Elections?

4.  Who authorzied the spending commitments that necessitated this request, and when were those commitments made?

5.  Has the Ministry of Finance revised its full-year revenue and expenditure projections in light of this shortfall?

6.  What is the draw-down status of the Natural Resource Fund, and what disbursement approvals have been made since 1 January 2026?

IV.THE ELECTION HYPOTHESIS

The 592 Guardian does not make accusations lightly. We are, however, compelled by the available evidence to state what many Guyanese are already saying in their homes, on their minibuses, and on social media: this supplementary bill has the appearance — and the timing — of an electoral financing vehicle.

The Local Government Elections are approaching. The Ali administration is acutely aware of the legitimacy it derives from constituency-level victories. The pattern of large, vaguely justified expenditure coinciding with electoral cycles is not novel in Guyanese political history — and it has not been unique to any single party. What is novel is the scale. Fifty-four billion dollars in supplementary spending authority, sought from a compliant National Assembly majority, with minimal public itemization, in the months before a national vote, represents a qualitatively new threshold of fiscal-political risk.

The government will, predictably, deny this. It will cite development imperatives, emergent capital needs, and the accelerating pace of transformation. It will point to visible projects — roads, hospitals, solar installations — as evidence that the money is going where it should. It will accuse critics of playing politics.

But accusations do not require guilt — they require accountability. And accountability requires transparency. Show us the line items. Show us the procurement records. Show us the disbursement schedule. If the spending is legitimate, the documentation will vindicate the government. If it is not, the Guyanese people deserve to know before they cast their votes, not after.

V.THE FORTRESS AND THE FICTION

President Ali told the Dominican Republic’s energy press that the Natural Resource Fund is Guyana’s ‘fortress of fiscal responsibility.’ It is a fine phrase. It is the kind of language that sounds authoritative in a glossy magazine feature or an investor roadshow. But a fortress that requires a $54 billion emergency drawdown four months into the fiscal year is not a fortress. It is a façade.

The President speaks internationally of ‘deliberate diversification’ and ‘long-term transformation.’ He invokes future generations. He promises forests of opportunity. But one cannot credibly plan for future generations while demonstrating an inability to project spending needs over a single fiscal quarter. These two positions — visionary stewardship of intergenerational wealth and chaotic, opaque supplementary demands — are irreconcilable. The international audience hearing the inspiring version of this story deserves to know the domestic reality.

Guyana’s oil wealth is real. The developmental opportunity it represents is real. The damage that fiscal recklessness, elite capture, and political manipulation of that wealth can inflict is equally real. The resource curse that President Ali so confidently claims to be defying is not conjured by pessimists — it is documented, in granular detail, in the economic histories of Nigeria, Angola, Venezuela, and a dozen other states where the rhetoric of transformation preceded decades of squandered potential.

The antidote to that curse is not confident rhetoric. It is institutional transparency, robust parliamentary oversight, independent auditing, and a media and civil society willing to ask uncomfortable questions even when — especially when — the government’s international image is riding high.

VI.OUR DEMAND

The 592 Guardian calls on the National Assembly’s Opposition to refuse passage of this supplementary appropriation until the government tables a fully itemized breakdown of every line item, the originating ministry, the contractual basis for each expenditure, and the specific projects or programs to be funded.

We call on the Auditor General’s office to immediately flag this request for priority review and to publish a preliminary assessment of its consistency with the fiscal rules governing Natural Resource Fund disbursements.

We call on civil society organizations, the Private Sector Commission, and the academic community to add their voices to the demand for transparency. The silence of institutions in the face of fiscal opacity is itself a form of complicity.

And we call on every Guyanese citizen to remember, when they go to vote in the Local Government Elections, that a government which cannot explain where $54 billion went in sixteen weeks is not a government that has earned the right to speak of ‘forests of opportunity for generations to come.’

The seeds being planted today may indeed shelter generations — but they will be the wrong generation’s forest.

This editorial represents the independent position of The 592 Guardian Editorial Board. The 592 Guardian is an independent accountability publication committed to social justice journalism in Guyana and the wider Caribbean region.

© 2026 The 592 Guardian  •  All rights reserved

Guyana’s Uranium Gamble

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦RESOURCE ACCOUNTABILITY♦ JUNE 2026

Guyana’s Uranium Gamble: Strategic Resource, Weak Safeguards

The announcement that Canadian junior explorer U92 Energy Corp. has acquired a decade’s worth of technical data for the Kurupung uranium project should not be treated as routine mining news. It is, in fact, a development that exposes a glaring policy vacuum, raises serious regulatory questions, and signals that Guyana may be drifting into a strategically sensitive sector without the institutional readiness to manage it.

Uranium is not gold, nor is it bauxite. It is a strategic mineral tied directly to nuclear energy and global security frameworks.

 Countries that permit uranium exploration and production do so under strict legislative regimes, layered oversight, and international safeguards aligned with institutions such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Guyana, by contrast, appears to be approaching uranium under the same legal and administrative architecture used for conventional minerals. This approach is, at best, outdated, and at worst, dangerously insufficient.

At the center of this issue is U92’s acquisition of a comprehensive historical dataset underpinning a 20.6 million-pound uranium resource estimate. The dataset—comprising geological mapping, drill records, assay results, geophysical surveys, and metallurgical analyses—represents the intellectual and technical foundation of the project. Control of this data is not incidental; it determines how the resource is valued, developed, and ultimately monetized.

Yet this critical asset was secured through a CA$500,000 transaction settled entirely in shares.

 

This raises immediate red flags. Share-based transactions of this nature often obscure true valuation and bypass the financial transparency that accompanies cash deals. They can signal limited liquidity on the part of the acquiring company, while simultaneously transferring significant value through speculative equity instruments. In practical terms, a decade of strategic geological intelligence has now changed hands without a clear indication of its real market worth.

More troubling, however, is the layered corporate structure through which control of this uranium project has been assembled. U92, a Canadian entity, acquired a Singaporean company—LIA Industries—which in turn controls a Guyanese subsidiary holding the prospecting licenses. Now, through a separate agreement, U92 consolidates ownership of the project’s technical data.

This multi-jurisdictional arrangement complicates oversight and raises legitimate questions about beneficial ownership, regulatory scrutiny, and accountability.

 It is precisely the type of structure that demands heightened due diligence from state agencies, particularly when the underlying asset involves a mineral of strategic importance.

There is no public indication that such scrutiny has been applied.

Equally concerning is the apparent absence of a national uranium policy. Guyana has not articulated how it intends to regulate uranium exploration, manage its environmental risks, or comply with international nuclear material safeguards. There is no evidence of a dedicated legal framework governing the handling, storage, transport, or export of radioactive materials. Nor is there clarity on whether existing institutions possess the technical capacity to oversee such a sector.

Instead, what is unfolding suggests that Guyana is allowing a foreign junior explorer—whose primary asset is speculative capital—to establish early control over both the physical resource and the data that defines it.

The timeline adds further pressure. The prospecting licenses issued for the Kurupung property expire in April 2027, with possible extensions to 2029. This creates an inherent incentive to accelerate drilling and resource validation, potentially outpacing environmental oversight and regulatory preparedness. Already, a 5,000-metre diamond drilling program is being mobilized, with infrastructure development underway.

The pace of activity stands in stark contrast to the silence on policy.

This is not an argument against resource development. It is an argument for coherence, transparency, and strategic awareness

 Countries such as Canada and Australia permit uranium mining, but only within robust regulatory systems that integrate environmental protection, national security considerations, and international compliance obligations. Others, including Kazakhstan and Namibia, maintain strong state involvement in uranium projects to ensure national interests are preserved.

Guyana, on the other hand, appears to be entering this sector without a declared framework, while permitting complex offshore ownership structures and opaque transactions to define its trajectory.

This raises unavoidable questions.

What due diligence was conducted on U92 Energy Corp. and its affiliated entities? Did the Government of Guyana assess the implications of transferring control of a decade’s worth of uranium exploration data through a share-based transaction? Is there a national policy governing uranium exploration and potential production? Are Guyana’s laws aligned with international nuclear safeguards and export control regimes? And critically, who is ultimately accountable for ensuring that this sector develops in a manner consistent with national security and environmental protection?

These are not abstract concerns. They go to the heart of sovereignty, governance, and long-term national interest.

Guyana cannot afford to treat uranium as just another line item in its extractive portfolio. The decisions being made now—quietly, and with limited public scrutiny—will shape not only the future of this resource, but also the country’s credibility in managing strategically sensitive industries.

If there is a policy, it must be stated. If there are safeguards, they must be demonstrated. And if there is oversight, it must be visible

Anything less would suggest that Guyana is not managing its uranium potential—but surrendering it.

 

GHOSTS OF THE PHANTOM SQUAD       

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THE 592 GUARDIAN   |   INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL

SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL

 GHOSTS OF THE                PHANTOM SQUAD           

AK-47s, Venezuelan Gangsters, and a Government That Has Seen This Before

The 592 Guardian  |  Accountability Journalism for the Guyanese Citizen Georgetown, Guyana  ·  June  2026

Thirty-three AK-47 assault rifles. Two separate seizures. In less than a month. One government that has, so far, said almost nothing of substance — and one city businessman with a record that reads less like a dossier and more like a warning that was never heeded. The 592 Guardian submits that what Guyana is witnessing is not an isolated law enforcement story. It is the re-emergence of a structural pathology that this country has paid for before in blood, impunity, and institutional decay. And the current administration’s silence is not merely politically inconvenient. It is, given what history has already documented, an indictment in itself.

On June 5, 2026, a routine-sounding police search in Farm, East Bank Demerara became anything but. Officers acting on intelligence intercepted a vehicle at Schoonard, West Bank Demerara, and found 23 AK-47 rifles and 503 rounds of matching ammunition. A Venezuelan national, Jonathan Gans, was arrested at the scene. Days later, a wanted bulletin was issued for city businessman Randy Jagdeo and one Orlando Gabriel. Jagdeo — now 40 years old — surrendered to the Criminal Investigation Department on Sunday, accompanied by his attorney. He remained in custody as of press time.

This was the second such seizure in less than  a month. In late May, ten AK-47-style rifles were intercepted in Berbice. Three Guyanese nationals are currently before the courts in connection with that matter. The serial numbers on most of the June cache had been obliterated. Deputy Police Commissioner Wendell Blanhum confirmed the weapons were manufactured in the United States.

Thirty-three military-grade rifles in sixty days. The GPF has no comment of substance. The Minister of Home Affairs says she is ‘still assessing.’ Guyanese have heard this cadence before.

When Demerara Waves asked Minister of Home Affairs Oneidge Walrond about the apparent motive behind two major arms seizures in rapid succession, she responded: “Still assessing. The investigation is active.” Her advisor, former minister Robeson Benn, offered only: “Guyanese always have to be concerned when guns are being pushed around.” That was it. From a government managing a country with one of the most valuable oil discoveries in the Western Hemisphere, two cabinet-level figures could not produce a single sentence about what 33 assault rifles are doing circulating through Guyanese wharves.

I.WHO IS RANDY JAGDEO — AND WHY DOES HIS RECORD MATTER

The AFC press release framing this story as a PPP protection scandal deserves scrutiny before it deserves amplification. Randy Jagdeo is not a PPP loyalist. His recent history suggests precisely the opposite political alignment — which makes the story considerably more complex and considerably more alarming than opposition talking points allow.

In May 2025, Jagdeo was charged with inciting treason following a Facebook post in which he declared that Essequibo belongs to Venezuela — a statement made, notably, while displaying signage at his ‘Thousand Dollar Store’ on the East Bank of Demerara that featured Guyana’s map with the Essequibo region excised. The charge carried the possibility of life imprisonment. In January 2026, the Diamond Magistrate’s Court threw the case out entirely, with Magistrate Dylon Bess upholding a no-case submission, finding the charge legally flawed and unsupported by sufficient evidence.

Tren De Aragua

Step back and read that sequence again. A Guyanese businessman publicly expressed sympathy for Venezuela’s territorial claims over Essequibo. His treason charge collapsed in court. Months later, he surfaces in connection with 23 AK-47s being transported by Venezuelan nationals. One of those nationals — Jonathan Gans — was arrested at the scene. Security officials, speaking on background to Demerara Waves, said they believe the weapons were destined for mining sector gangs or border networks, and that Tren de Aragua — the Venezuelan criminal organization with transnational reach — may be extending its footprint westward into Guyana.

A man who publicly sided with Venezuela on Essequibo. A treason charge that dissolved. Then Venezuelan nationals and 23 AK-47s. The 592 Guardian does not assert guilt. We assert that these facts demand answers no one in authority is providing.

The 592 Guardian does not assert that Randy Jagdeo is guilty of anything beyond what has been proven. What we do assert is this: the convergence of a pro-Venezuela public posture, a collapsed treason prosecution, and a subsequent arms trafficking investigation involving Venezuelan co-accused is not a coincidence that a responsible government can afford to treat with ‘still assessing.’ It is a national security threat that demands transparent, publicly communicated investigation — and it is receiving neither.

II.THE GHOST IN THE ROOM: ROGER KHAN AND THE PHANTOM SQUAD

The AFC’s invocation of Roger Khan is not mere electioneering. It is a reference to a chapter of Guyanese governance that was proven, prosecuted in a United States federal court, and never domestically reckoned with. For any reader unfamiliar with that chapter, The 592 Guardian submits the following record — not as historical color, but as living institutional precedent.

Between 2002 and 2006, Guyana was in the grip of a crime wave triggered by the escape of five prisoners from Camp Street Prison on February 23, 2002. Criminal gangs, most notoriously that of Rondell ‘Fineman’ Rawlins, conducted robberies, murders, and massacres. The Guyana Police Force was outmatched. Into that vacuum stepped Shaheed ‘Roger’ Khan — an Indo-Guyanese cocaine trafficker with construction and forestry businesses as cover, Colombian supply lines, and connections that reached into the highest offices of the People’s Progressive Party government led by President Bharrat Jagdeo.

What Khan ran was not a private security firm. It was an extrajudicial killing unit — the Phantom Squad — staffed largely by former police officers, armed with military-grade weapons, and operating with what prosecutors and WikiLeaks cables later established was de facto state protection. The squad’s primary targets were Afro-Guyanese criminal figures. The ethnic geometry of that targeting was not incidental. It was the entire point.

Khan later advertised in local newspapers — in his own name — that he had been fighting crime on behalf of the Bharrat Jagdeo-led government. The government denied it. The US federal court record told a different story.

The evidentiary record is not circumstantial. In December 2002, Khan and associates were intercepted by a Guyana Defense Force patrol driving an armored vehicle. Inside: military arms, and a Cellular Protocol Analyzer — a Smith Myers CSM 7806, sophisticated telephone interception equipment that is sold only with government authorization. The GDF detained them. They were released hours later on direct orders from Presidential Secretariat Head Roger Luncheon, who directed the return of all equipment.

In US federal court proceedings, Smith Myers co-director testimony confirmed the cellular intercept equipment used by Khan’s network had been sold to the Government of Guyana. Court exhibits showed the purchase was received on behalf of the government by then Health Minister Dr. Leslie Ramsammy. An independent contractor subsequently traveled to Guyana to train Khan and his associates in the equipment’s use. Dr. Ramsammy denied any knowledge of Khan or the surveillance device. The exhibits bearing his signature were entered into the court record regardless.

Among those killed as a direct result of communications intercepted using that equipment: Ronald Waddell, a popular Afro-Guyanese political talk show host, shot outside his East Bank Demerara home on January 30, 2006. And Donald Allison, youth organizer and boxing coach. A former Phantom Squad member turned DEA and FBI informant, Selwyn Vaughn, testified under oath to the operational details of Waddell’s execution — the surveillance, the call to Khan, the four former police officers who arrived in a burgundy Toyota AT 192 armed with automatic weapons.

A WikiLeaks cable from the US Embassy in Georgetown, later made public, is unambiguous: it states that Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj orchestrated Guyana’s death squads in 2002-03, certainly in close collaboration with Khan,’ and that Luncheon ‘intervened and ordered the authorities to release Khan and return his equipment.’ The cable also notes that PPP government leaders ‘were comfortable with Khan because they thought he was on their side,’ and expressed anxiety about the prospect of a criminal kingpin aligned with the political opposition.

The PPP was not merely tolerant of a drug lord. According to a US Embassy cable, a US federal court record, and Khan’s own public statements, it was his client. The question in 2026 is whether the institutional appetite for that arrangement was ever truly extinguished.

What happened to the principals? Gajraj resigned under international pressure and was appointed High Commissioner to India — a soft landing that became a template. A presidential commission of inquiry, chaired by then Acting Chief Justice Ian Chang, found ‘no credible evidence’ of Gajraj’s involvement in extrajudicial killings. The inquiry’s conclusions were contested by virtually every independent observer and contradicted by the US Embassy’s own assessment. Gajraj served in India until the government changed in 2015.

Roger Khan himself fled to Suriname in June 2006 as police closed in. Then-Justice Minister Chan Santokhi — now Suriname’s President — declared him a threat to national security. Khan was eventually extradited to the United States. He was convicted of narcotics trafficking, arms smuggling, money laundering, and witness tampering. He was sentenced to fifteen years. He returned to Guyana in September 2019 after serving approximately ten years. He was questioned about the murders of Ronald Waddell and Donald Allison. He was released on station bail days later. The charges were dropped. No evidence, it was said.

Roger Khan, as of the date of this editorial, is a free man in Guyana. The 592 Guardian formally asks: has he been questioned in connection with, or eliminated from, the current investigation into 33 AK-47 rifles moving through Guyanese wharves?

III. THE VENEZUELAN VECTOR: TREN DE ARAGUA AND GUYANA’S EXPOSED FLANK

The Roger Khan framing, while historically essential, must not be allowed to obscure the distinct and equally alarming security dimension of this crisis: the Venezuelan criminal penetration of Guyanese territory. These may be related phenomena — or they may be parallel tracks that intersect at the point of arms supply. Either possibility is grave.

Tren de Aragua is not a street gang. It is a transnational criminal organiZation that originated in the Tocoron Prison in Aragua state, Venezuela, and has since expanded across at least a dozen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its documented activities include arms trafficking, narcotics distribution, human trafficking, contract killing, and — increasingly — the provision of coercive services to state and non-state actors in territories where Venezuelan influence is being projected. Security analysts have documented its relationship with elements of the Maduro government as instrumentally symbiotic: the organization operates freely where it serves state interests and is contained where it does not.

Against that backdrop, the presence of Venezuelan nationals as primary movers in both the May Berbice seizure and the June Schoonard seizure is not a footnote. It is the story. Background sources cited by Demerara Waves believe the weapons were destined for mining sector networks or border gangs — and express the view that Tren de Aragua is actively expanding westward into Guyana. This aligns with the documented pattern of incidents along the Cuyuni River, where a GDF patrol boat was fired upon by unidentified gunmen as recently as May 29, 2026, injuring a soldier — the second such incident that month.

A GDF patrol boat fired upon on the Cuyuni. Venezuelan nationals moving AK-47s through Georgetown wharves. A businessman with public pro-Venezuela sympathies in police custody. This is not a crime story. It is a sovereignty story.

The ICJ proceedings on the Essequibo matter have not resolved the underlying pressure Venezuela applies through non-military means. Caracas has long understood that coercive presence in disputed territory — through mining networks, criminal infrastructure, and allied local facilitators — is a tool of territorial politics that costs far less than conventional military action and produces deniability that ICJ proceedings cannot easily pierce. The question The 592 Guardian raises is this: are the weapons now circulating in Guyana part of a criminal supply chain, a political intimidation infrastructure, or both? Because the answer to that question determines whether this is a GPF matter or a matter of national defense.

The GPF, to state the obvious, is not equipped to answer that question on its own. Its capacity limitations are institutional and resource-driven — not a criticism of individual officers but a structural reality. What is required is a joint intelligence assessment involving the GDF, the GPF’s organized crime unit, the DEA (which has maintained a Georgetown office since 2017), and CARICOM’s regional security architecture, to the extent that architecture can be activated. None of that has been publicly announced. The government has said it is ‘still assessing.’

IV.THE SILENCE DOCTRINE: WHAT INSTITUTIONAL NON-RESPONSE REVEALS

The AFC is wrong to frame this primarily as a PPP-protection story about Randy Jagdeo, because Jagdeo’s own public record does not support the claim that he is a PPP asset being shielded. But the AFC is entirely right to identify the government’s silence as a scandal in its own right — and the Roger Khan precedent is precisely why that silence cannot be given the benefit of the doubt.

The operating manual of PPP crisis management, as established across two decades of governance, follows a predictable sequence: initial silence, followed by minimal acknowledgment, followed by institutional process (inquiry, investigation, review) that produces findings convenient to the government, followed by the quiet resolution of the matter through reassignment, soft exile, or legal collapse. Ronald Gajraj went to India. Roger Khan’s murder charges evaporated. The Camp Street massacre inquiries produced no convictions of political significance. The pattern is not conspiracy theory. It is documented institutional history.

The silence of the Ali-Jagdeo government on 33 AK-47s is not uncertainty. It is a posture. And that posture has a name: it is called impunity management.

 

The specific questions that silence must be made to answer are these.

First: how did rifles — US-manufactured, with obliterated serial numbers — pass through Guyanese port infrastructure in not one but two transactions within sixty days? Wharves are regulated. Customs is a state function. Someone either missed this or facilitated it. The government owes the public a customs and port-of-entry audit, publicly disclosed.

Second: what is the status of Randy Jagdeo’s prior case — the treason matter — in relation to this investigation? The collapse of that prosecution deserves re-examination in light of his current circumstances. The 592 Guardian does not suggest the earlier charge was validly framed — the magistrate’s ruling suggests otherwise. But the pattern of a man with documented pro-Venezuela public positions being in proximity to a Venezuelan-linked arms network is a pattern that prosecutorial authorities have an obligation to examine in its totality, not in isolated case files.

Third: what is the current status of Roger Khan in Guyana, and has he been interviewed as part of any intelligence assessment related to the current arms proliferation? The 592 Guardian acknowledges this question may seem like a reach to some readers. We submit that given Khan’s documented history of arms procurement, his established criminal networks, and the fact that he has been a free man in this country for seven years with no accountability for any of the acts he admitted to, the question is not a reach. It is due diligence.

V.WHAT ACCOUNTABILITY DEMANDS

The 592 Guardian does not traffic in conspiracy. We traffic in documented pattern, institutional precedent, and the editorial obligation to ask what powerful entities prefer not to answer. On the basis of what has been established — in US federal courts, in WikiLeaks cables, in the public record of the Phantom Squad era, and in the current facts of two arms seizures and a government that cannot find its voice — we make the following editorial demands.

The Ministry of Home Affairs must provide a public briefing — not a press statement — on the results of its ‘assessment,’ including a timeline of both seizures, the known movement of the weapons through Guyanese territory, and the status of all persons in custody. ‘Active investigation’ cannot be a shield against public accountability on matters of this gravity.

The Guyana Revenue Authority and the Customs Anti-Narcotic Unit must commission and publish an audit of port-of-entry controls that speaks directly to how military-grade weapons are entering Guyana undetected. If that audit reveals systemic failure, the responsible officials must be identified. If it reveals facilitation, those individuals must be prosecuted.

The National Assembly must hold an emergency session on national security. The Speaker — whose own record of institutional responsiveness The 592 Guardian has previously documented — must convene that session within fourteen days. Parliamentary oversight of the security apparatus is not optional in a constitutional democracy.

And the government must answer, publicly and on the record, whether any domestic intelligence assessment has been made of Tren de Aragua’s presence in Guyana — and if so, what its findings are and what response has been authorized.

THE ROT IN THE PLOT

Guyana has been here before. A crime wave it could not contain. A state that found it more convenient to outsource violence than to build institutions. A drug lord with an armored vehicle, military weapons, and government-restricted surveillance equipment — released the same day he was detained, by order of the Presidential Secretariat.

That chapter did not end cleanly. It ended with unmarked graves, with a talk show host shot in his driveway, with a boxing coach killed on intelligence gathered by equipment the Health Minister signed for, and with a drug lord who served ten years in an American prison and returned to Guyana to face — nothing.

We do not know, as of this writing, whether Randy Jagdeo is a criminal, a facilitator, a dupe, or a man in the wrong place at the wrong time. The courts will determine that. What we do know is that 33 military-grade rifles have entered this country in sixty days, that Venezuelan nationals are the primary movers, that a man with documented pro-Venezuela public sympathies is in custody, that the border is being probed with live fire, and that the government’s response to all of it is silence dressed up as process.

The light is in. The rot is visible. What remains to be seen is whether any institution in this country has the will to act on what it illuminates — or whether Guyana will wait, as it has before, for an American federal court to tell us what happened in our own wharves.

The 592 Guardian is an independent accountability journalism outlet covering Guyanese governance, public finance, and regional geopolitics.

Editorial correspondence: editor@the592guardian.com

 

Aubrey Norton’s Unearned Throne

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦OPINION♦POLITICS                OP- ED                                                                                              BY: Hem Kumar

Aubrey Norton’s Unearned Throne

Defeated, deserted, and demoted to third place, the PNCR/APNU leader still acts as though the mandate never left him — and Guyana’s democracy is paying the price.

The 592 Guardian Editorial Board  |  June, 2026

Aubrey Compton Norton answers to several titles. He is Leader of the People’s National Congress Reform. He is Chairman, and Representative of the List of Candidates, for A Partnership for National Unity. What he is not, and has not been since the night of September 6, 2025, is Leader of the Opposition. That office now belongs to Azruddin Mohammed, whose three-month-old We Invest in Nationhood party did what six decades of PNC machinery never expected : it  pushed Norton’s coalition into third place. The titles Norton still holds describe a man running a smaller and smaller room.

The title he lost described the only one that mattered constitutionally. He has conducted himself ever since as though the distinction were beneath his notice

 The numbers are not contestable, because they are GECOM’s own. APNU went from 31 seats in the previous National Assembly to 12 in this one — the worst result in the coalition’s history, and the first time since its founding that it failed to carry a single region. Georgetown, the capital the PNC effectively owned for the better part of six decades, fell to the PPP/C for the first time, by a margin of nearly two to one. WIN’s 16 seats made it the country’s new official opposition. Norton’s APNU, with its 12, is now the third force in a parliament it once dominated.

This was not a setback. It was a dismantling, and Norton was the man at the wheel when it happened.

What followed was supposed to be a reckoning. Instead it has been a kind of stage management. Norton has not called a single General Council meeting of his own party since the defeat. The PNCR’s Congress — the one body with actual authority to replace him — has been pushed back to 2027, on his own say-so, in the name of “consolidation.” In June, with the wreckage of September still being swept up, he told a WPA-aligned broadcast that he is prepared to stand for the party leadership again, having already ruled himself out only for the presidency. A man who led his party to its historic floor has positioned himself as the only person qualified to lead its recovery. That is not humility. That is occupancy.

The exodus continued anyway, and it has not gone where a healthy opposition’s defectors should go.

In May, a fresh group of former APNU parliamentarians and sitting regional councillors — Ricky Ramsaroop, Shurwayne Holder, Dinesh Jaiprashad, Ravoldo Birbal, Sheik Yaseen, Prince Holder, and Gangadai Lloyd — sat down with PPP General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo and declared themselves part of his party’s political family. They joined a list that already included former PNC stalwarts James Bond, Jermaine Figueira, Geeta Chandan-Edmond, Richard Van West Charles, Daniel Seeram, and Samuel Sandy.

Notice the direction of travel. These were not disillusioned PNC supporters drifting toward WIN, the upstart that actually defeated Norton’s coalition at the polls. They walked directly into the government’s camp. For the party’s base, this has landed as a double shot of sobriety: a historic loss at the ballot box, compounded by a leadership that keeps quietly handing the winners more of its own people. Every PNC defector who lands at Freedom House rather than at WIN’s door is not a wandering vote. He is a transfer payment from the opposition to the government — and Norton’s coalition has been making those payments on a near-monthly basis.

Norton’s own account of all this is that nobody should be surprised, that the departing members had signaled their intentions for some time, that defection is simply what happens to parties out of power. He is, in other words, narrating his own hemorrhage as background noise. His party’s General Secretary, Sherwin Benjamin, called the May defections an act of “personal aggrandizement.” Norton called it predictable. Neither man called it a leadership failure — which is the one explanation the evidence actually supports.

He has not lacked for warning. Former Georgetown Mayor Ubraj Narine resigned from the PNCR in November, saying the party had been “hemorrhaging internally and externally.” In May, in a public letter, he went further, telling Norton plainly that he had to step aside or watch the PNCR lose the one stronghold it has held since Forbes Burnham built it — City Hall itself. Norton’s answer was silence, followed by a renewed bid for his own job.

The title he lost described the only one that mattered constitutionally. He has conducted himself ever since as though the distinction were beneath his notice.

 It is against this backdrop — third place, a bleeding caucus, a postponed Congress, a leader the public record shows clinging rather than rebuilding — that Norton has chosen to assert himself on a matter of real constitutional consequence. As this media outfit  reported this week, Azruddin Mohamed, the man who now holds the office Norton lost, has moved to replace the three long-serving opposition-nominated GECOM commissioners, arguing that their tenure traces to a parliamentary mandate that no longer exists. Norton’s reply, offered without engaging the constitutional argument Mohamed actually made, amounted to a flat denial: “no vacancy exists,” he said, unless a sitting commissioner dies or resigns.

That is not a constitutional position. It is a veto, asserted by a leader the architecture of the Constitution no longer recognizes as the opposition’s voice.

A claim made over commissioners who were never his appointees to begin with — Charles Corbin, Desmond Trotman, and Vincent Alexander were advised upon by a previous opposition leader representing a different party and a different mandate entirely. Norton wants the authority of an office he does not hold, exercised over appointments he did not make, to outlast an election he comprehensively lost. That is the kind of unchecked, informal power this board has in mind, and it is not an isolated incident. It is the pattern.

It would be one thing if Norton’s caution were a strategic choice his own coalition endorsed. It is not. Within APNU itself, voices including parliamentarians Terrence Campbell and David Hinds have called for the kind of social mobilization an opposition reduced to twelve seats might actually need to make itself heard against a government with thirty-six. Norton has offered no comparable urgency — only consolidation, only continuity, only himself.

None of this serves the PNC’s supporters, the generations of Afro-Guyanese voters whose loyalty built the party Norton now administers. It serves the government he is nominally there to check.

 

A demoralized, third-place opposition that cannot hold its own councillors, cannot convene its own Congress, and spends its remaining credibility defending GECOM appointments nobody currently mandates him to defend is not an obstacle to the PPP/C’s continued dominance. It is a convenience. Whatever Norton intends, the effect of his refusal to leave is to aid and abet the very consolidation of power his party was founded to resist.

A leader who will not yield the chair, in a moment that calls for renewal, is not protecting the opposition. He is one of the quiet guarantees of its continued weakness — and in a country where unchecked executive power is the actual and growing danger, that guarantee is itself a clear and present danger to the growth of any credible check on the state.

Someone in the PNC needs to bell this cat. The party, and the country, cannot wait much longer for that someone to arrive.

— The 592 Guardian Editorial Board

STOLEN FROM THE INTERIOR:

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        THE 592 GUARDIAN     

INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL | ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM

STOLEN FROM THE INTERIOR:

How the State Has Looted, Ignored, and Buried the Amerindian Purpose Fund for Twenty-Five Years

The 2024 Auditor General’s Report does not merely flag irregularities in the Amerindian Purpose Fund. It confirms — once again, with the numbing patience of a system that no longer expects to be heard — that a fund established for Guyana’s most marginalized communities has been allowed to dissolve into a legal void, a financial black hole, and a graveyard of undelivered promises. This editorial names the failure, traces its architecture, and holds its custodians to account.

The 592 Guardian   | Investigative Desk | June 2026

Let us begin with what the law says — or rather, what it no longer says. The Amerindian Purpose Fund was created under Section 28 of the Amerindian Act Chapter 29:01. In 2006, that Act was repealed. The successor legislation, the Amerindian Act 2006, made no provision for the Fund’s continued operation. From that moment, the Amerindian Purpose Fund ceased to have a legal foundation.

That was nineteen years ago.

In nineteen years, no administration — not the APNU+AFC coalition, not the PPP/C government that succeeded it — has seen fit to pass the enabling legislation that would give this Fund a lawful basis. Money has continued to move through it. Cheques have been written in its name. Communities have been told projects are funded. And the legal infrastructure to govern any of it has simply never existed.

A fund created to serve Indigenous communities has operated without law, without accounts, and without consequence — for nearly two decades. That is not negligence. That is policy.

The 2024 Auditor General’s Report, paragraphs 208 through 210, confirms what previous reports have confirmed in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and before that. Financial Statements for the Amerindian Purpose Fund were not presented for audit. The finding, the AG notes with understated precision, echoes “similar observations noted in previous years.” This is the language of an institution that has stopped expecting accountability and begun merely recording its absence.

The 592 Guardian will not accept that framing. We place the evidence before the public as a prosecutor places it before a jury — methodically, without embellishment, and with the full weight of what it means.

II.THE FOURTEEN COUNTS — EVIDENCE OF INSTITUTIONAL BETRAYAL

The following findings are drawn directly from the 2024 AG Report and corroborated by the AG’s prior annual reports. Each constitutes a discrete, documented failure. Together they form a pattern so consistent, so repeated, and so unaddressed that no honest observer can attribute it to circumstance.

|COUNT 1: OPERATING WITHOUT LEGAL AUTHORITY

Source: 2024 AG Report, Para. 209; Amerindian Act 2006

Finding: The Fund’s enabling legislation was repealed in 2006. No replacement provision was enacted.

Duration: 19 years of unlawful operation

Every transaction processed through the APF since 2006 has occurred in a legal vacuum. No minister, no permanent secretary, no budget officer authorized to disburse public funds through this vehicle had — or has — a valid statutory basis to do so. The question that neither the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs nor the Attorney General’s Chambers has been asked to answer publicly is this: what is the legal status of every dollar disbursed through this fund since the repeal? The 592 Guardian asks it now.

|COUNT 2: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. ZERO FINANCIAL STATEMENTS.

Source: 2024 AG Report, Para. 210; AG 2014 Report

Finding: No audited financial statements have been produced since the Fund opened in 2000.

Pattern: Flagged repeatedly — including as a “similar observation” from prior years in 2024

The Amerindian Purpose Fund was opened in 2000. It has never — not once in twenty-five years — produced an audited financial statement. Section 29 of the Act explicitly requires the Ministry to prepare annual financial statements subject to audit by the Auditor General. This requirement has been consistently violated across multiple administrations. The Ministry’s response to the 2024 finding? Staff shortages. The same response given last year. The year before that.

|COUNT 3: BANK ACCOUNT LAST RECONCILED: 2009

Source: AG 2020 Report, as reported by Stabroek News

Finding: The Fund’s bank account has not been balanced against its books in over 15 years.

Implication: No one in government can say with certainty how much money is in this Fund or where it went.

Bank reconciliation is not an advanced financial practice. It is the most basic act of fiscal stewardship — matching what the ledger says against what the bank statement shows. The APF’s account has not been reconciled in over fifteen years. This means that the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs has been authorizing expenditures from an account whose balance it has never verified. The Ministry does not know what it holds. It does not know what it has spent. And it has told the nation’s auditors, in effect, that this is acceptable.

|COUNT 4: GYD $647.6M OUT THE DOOR. NO RECEIPTS.

Source: 2024 AG Report

Amount: GYD $647.6M (approx. US$3.1M)

Finding: 109 cheque orders from 2023 and 2024 remain uncleared — money paid in advance, proof of delivery never returned.

One hundred and nine cheque orders. Nearly three million US dollars. Disbursed in advance. Not one receipt confirmed what the money purchased. Under standard financial regulations, cheque orders must be cleared within thirty days. These have not been cleared. In some cases they have been outstanding for well over a year. The rules exist precisely to prevent public money from disappearing without trace. Those rules have been systematically ignored.

|COUNT 5: GYD $352.6M STILL UNCLEARED AS OF SEPTEMBER 2025

Source: 2024 AG Report

Amount: GYD $352.6M (approx. US$1.7M)

Finding: 74 cheque orders from 2023 remained uncleared as of September 2025 — nearly two years overdue.

These are not recent disbursements. These are 2023 cheque orders that had still not been accounted for as of September 2025. The rules gave 30 days. Two years passed. The Ministry issued no public explanation. No official was disciplined. No money was recovered. The Audit Office issued a recommendation. The Ministry said it would follow up.

|COUNT 6: GYD $101.5M IN STALE CHEQUES — 19 VILLAGES LEFT WITHOUT CAPITAL FUNDS

Source: 2024 AG Report, Para. 208

Amount: GYD $101.5M (approx. US$487,000)

Finding: 25 cheques for capital projects across 19 Village Councils written, recorded as spent, and allowed to expire undisbursed.

This is the finding that should have triggered a parliamentary emergency. Twenty-five cheques. Nineteen communities. Nearly half a million US dollars designated for capital projects — roads, drainage, water, community infrastructure — written, recorded in the public accounts as expenditure, and then allowed to go stale in a government drawer. The money was never delivered. The projects were never built. The communities were never told.

Half a million dollars for nineteen Indigenous communities — written, recorded as spent, and left to expire. Not one village was named. Not one official was held accountable.

And this is where the failure compounds into something uglier still: the AG Report does not name the nineteen communities. Nineteen Indigenous villages are owed capital project money that went stale. They are owed the basic dignity of being identified as victims of this failure. The 592 Guardian demands their names be published. If the Ministry will not publish them, we will use every available mechanism to obtain and print them.

|COUNT 7: THE MINING MONEY THAT NEVER CAME

Source: Stabroek News, February 2022; Public record

Finding: GGMC — the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission — is required to contribute to the Fund from mining activity. In 2020 and 2021, it paid nothing.

While Guyana’s mining sector generated tens of billions in revenue and the country celebrated oil-era GDP growth, the statutory contributions owed to a fund for Indigenous communities from that very extractive activity were simply not made. No penalty was levied. No corrective transfer was ordered. The GGMC, a state entity, violated its statutory obligation to the APF without consequence. The government that presides over both entities said nothing.

|COUNT 8: THE LOGBOOK NOBODY KEPT

Source: 2024 AG Report

Finding: The Cheque Order Register — the basic ledger tracking every advance — was not maintained. Auditors could not measure the full scale of the problem.

The Cheque Order Register is not a complex financial instrument. It is a logbook. It records every advance made against the Fund so that auditors — and the public — can follow the money. It was not kept. This means the scale of the uncleared cheques problem documented in this report is a floor, not a ceiling. The true extent of what has been disbursed and not accounted for cannot be determined because the Ministry did not maintain the records that would make determination possible. This is not a filing error. It is the destruction — through inaction — of the evidentiary basis for accountability.

|COUNT 9: THE MINISTRY DOES NOT KNOW WHAT IT OWNS

Source: 2024 AG Report

Finding: Asset inventories not updated — a breach of the Stores Regulations. Flagged in previous years.

The Ministry of Amerindian Affairs cannot produce an accurate inventory of the assets it holds. This is a violation of the Stores Regulations. It means that equipment, vehicles, and materials procured through this Fund — paid for with public money designated for Indigenous communities — cannot be verified as existing, functioning, or located. The Ministry is a steward that cannot account for what it holds in trust.

|COUNT 10: FIVE RECOMMENDATIONS. ONE IMPLEMENTED.

Source: 2024 AG Report

Finding: Of the 2023 audit’s 5 recommendations, only 1 was fully implemented. The remaining 4 were partially addressed at best.

Pattern: Identical scorecard to prior years.

The Audit Office does not make recommendations casually. Each recommendation represents a documented failure of governance with a prescribed corrective action. Of five recommendations issued after the 2023 audit, four remain unimplemented entering 2025. This is not a ministry struggling to comply. This is a ministry that has calculated — correctly, so far — that non-compliance carries no cost.

|COUNT 11: FLAGGED SINCE 2014. TWO GOVERNMENTS. SAME FINDING.

Source: AG Reports 2014–2024; Public record

Finding: These failures predate the current administration. The PPP/C and APNU+AFC both presided over this fund without correcting its structural deficiencies.

This editorial does not spare the previous administration. The APNU+AFC coalition governed from 2015 to 2020 and produced the same audit findings, the same non-responses, and the same institutional inertia. The APF’s condition is not a partisan problem. It is a problem of the Guyanese state’s relationship with its Indigenous citizens — a relationship in which accountability has never been demanded and has therefore never been delivered. Both governing parties bear responsibility. The current administration bears current responsibility.

|COUNT 12: “WRONG TIME TO DISCUSS” — THE MINISTER’S WORDS ON RECORD

Source: Stabroek News, December 2021

Finding: When APF failures made the news in 2021, the subject minister told the press it was the ‘wrong time to discuss’ the matter.

In December 2021, the Amerindian Purpose Fund’s failures became newsworthy. Communities were asking questions. Journalists were filing queries. The minister responsible for the Fund’s oversight told the press — on record — that it was the “wrong time to discuss” the matter. Four audit reports later, the finding reads identically. The 592 Guardian asks: when is the right time? After five more reports? Ten? When has the last cheque gone stale and the last community has stopped asking?

III.THE EVIDENCE — BY THE NUMBERS
FINDING
AMOUNT
 
 
STATUS

 
Uncleared cheque orders (2023–24)

 GYD $647.6M / US$3.1M

 109 orders — no receipts returned
Stale cheques — Village Councils

 GYD $101.5M / US$487K

 25 cheques expired; 19 communities unserved
Long-outstanding orders (to Sept 2025)

 GYD $352.6M / US$1.7M

 74 orders from 2023 — nearly 2 years overdue
GGMC statutory contributions unpaid

 Unknown

 Zero paid in 2020 and 2021
Financial statements produced (since 2000)

 None

 25 consecutive years — zero audited accounts
Bank reconciliations (since 2009)

 None

 16+ years — no balance verification
Prior recommendations implemented (2023)

 1 of 5

 4 outstanding — same pattern as prior years
IV.THE ACCUSED — NAMING INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Accountability journalism requires more than the passive voice. It is not enough to say that “the Fund failed” or that “statements were not produced.” Institutions do not fail in the abstract. People make decisions — or fail to make them — and those decisions have consequences. The 592 Guardian names the institutional actors who bear direct responsibility for the condition of the Amerindian Purpose Fund.

|THE MINISTRY OF AMERINDIAN AFFAIRS

As the line ministry responsible for the APF, the Ministry bears primary institutional culpability. Its permanent secretary and budget officers have presided over twenty-five years without financial statements, fifteen years without bank reconciliation, and a cheque register that was simply never maintained. Its formal responses to audit findings — “staff shortages,” “will follow up,” “ongoing” — constitute a studied contempt for the oversight function of the Audit Office. The Ministry does not lack the resources to comply. Guyana is the fastest-growing economy in the Western Hemisphere. What it lacks is the will.

|THE MINISTER OF AMERINDIAN AFFAIRS

Political accountability sits above administrative accountability. The minister who told the press in 2021 that the APF’s failures were the “wrong time to discuss” is on record. That deflection was not a one-time lapse of judgement. It was the public expression of a governing philosophy: that the Amerindian communities served by this fund are not a constituency whose grievances require urgent attention. The minister responsible for the APF — then and now — must answer publicly for the condition of this institution.

|THE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

The legal vacuum at the heart of the APF is not a mystery. It is a known deficiency that has existed since 2006. The Office of the Attorney General advises the state on legal compliance. It has had nineteen years to advise that the Fund requires enabling legislation. Either that advice was given and ignored — in which case, the public deserves to know — or it was never given, which is a dereliction of institutional duty.

|THE GUYANA GEOLOGY AND MINES COMMISSION

The GGMC has a statutory obligation to contribute to the Amerindian Purpose Fund from mining revenues. In 2020 and 2021, it contributed nothing. In years when Guyana’s extractive sector was generating record revenues — revenues derived in significant part from activity on and near Indigenous lands — the state entity tasked with channeling a portion of those revenues back to affected communities simply did not do so. No penalty was imposed. No public explanation was offered. This is not a compliance failure. It is a choice.

V.THE VERDICT — WHAT MUST HAPPEN NOW

The 592 Guardian does not issue verdicts in the judicial sense. We issue them in the democratic sense: we place the evidence before the public and call upon those with the power to act to exercise it. The following is not a wish list. It is a minimum standard of governance in a country that calls itself a constitutional democracy.

1.Immediate enabling legislation

The National Assembly must pass legislation giving the Amerindian Purpose Fund a lawful operational basis. Every month this is delayed is another month of unlawful disbursement. Cabinet must bring the bill. The opposition must support it. There is no legitimate grounds to oppose it.

2.Publish the nineteen villages

The Ministry of Amerindian Affairs must immediately publish the names of the nineteen communities owed capital project money that went stale. These communities have a right to know. The 592 Guardian will pursue this through access to information mechanisms if the Ministry declines.

3.Full forensic audit of all APF transactions since 2006

The Audit Office, in cooperation with independent forensic accountants, must trace every transaction through the APF since the legal basis for the Fund was repealed. The public is entitled to know the full extent of what has been disbursed, to whom, and whether it reached its intended recipients.

4.Recover the GGMC arrears

The government must calculate and recover the statutory contributions owed to the APF by the GGMC for the years in which it paid nothing. These are not discretionary payments. They are legal obligations.

5.Name and discipline the officers responsible

The permanent secretaries, budget officers, and administrative officials who presided over the destruction of the Cheque Order Register, the failure to maintain asset inventories, and the non-production of financial statements must be identified and subjected to appropriate disciplinary proceedings under the Public Service Rules.

6.Parliamentary oversight hearing

The Standing Committee on Public Accounts must convene a dedicated hearing on the APF, at which the Minister, the Permanent Secretary, and the Auditor General must all appear. The hearings must be public and broadcast.

VI.CLOSING ARGUMENT

Guyana is producing over 900,000 barrels of oil per day. The Natural Resource Fund holds billions. The government speaks, at every international forum, of transformation, of prosperity, of a new Guyana. Meanwhile, nineteen Indigenous communities wait for capital project money that was recorded as spent years ago. A fund created in their name has no legal standing, no audited accounts, and a bank balance that no one has verified since 2009.

This is not a resource problem. Guyana is awash in resources. This is a prioritization problem — a revelation of who, in the hierarchy of the state’s concern, is considered worth accounting for.

The Amerindian communities of Guyana’s interior did not consent to being governed by institutions that cannot account for the money held in their name. They did not agree that their capital projects could be written into the budget and then allowed to expire in a Georgetown drawer. They did not accept that the legal framework governing their fund could dissolve without replacement and that no one in twenty years of governance would notice — or care enough to act.

No law. No oversight. No answers. Our communities deserve better. — Concerned Guyanese

The 592 Guardian will continue to report on this matter until the nineteen villages are named, the forensic audit is conducted, and the ministers and officials responsible are held to public account. We note, for the record, that the Amerindian Act 2006 — the very legislation that repealed this Fund’s legal basis — was passed under a government that celebrated itself as a champion of Indigenous rights. The hypocrisy of that record belongs in the history of this country.

The Interior is not a footnote. Its people are not a rounding error. And their money is not the state’s to lose.

THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ Investigative Desk ♦ All findings sourced from the 2024 Auditor General’s Report and corroborated prior AG reports.

©2026 The 592 Guardian. All rights reserved. Reproduction for non-commercial public interest purposes permitted with attribution.

A Bill for Themselves

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦EDITORIAL

A Bill for Themselves

How Guyana’s Political Class Is Cashing Out on Oil Wealth — and What Parliament Must Do About It

Veteran trade unionist Lincoln Lewis did not mince words. In a letter to the editor published this week, Lewis observed what many Guyanese already feel but rarely see stated so plainly: politics in this country increasingly resembles a lifetime investment plan. While workers battle rising costs, stagnant wages, and crumbling public services, Parliament is being asked to restore — and expand — a buffet of unlimited perks for former presidents. Lewis was right to raise the alarm. This editorial takes his intervention as its starting point and goes further.

The Former Presidents’ Benefits Bill is not a pension measure. It is not a matter of dignified retirement. It is, stripped of its institutional language, a wealth transfer — from the Guyanese public to a small class of individuals who have already benefited enormously from the offices they held. In a country seven years into one of the largest oil booms in the Western Hemisphere, this bill reveals, with unusual clarity, exactly who this government believes the state is for.

Oil “wealth is plentiful when politicians are spending it on themselves.”

I. What the Bill Actually Proposes

Lewis is careful to note — and this editorial agrees — that reasonable retirement benefits for former heads of state are legitimate. The issue is not pension. The issue is the specific catalogue of entitlements this bill would codify at public expense, indefinitely and without accountability.

Proposed Entitlements Under the Former Presidents’ Benefits Bill
Unlimited household utility payments (electricity, water, telecommunications)
Full complement of household staff — funded by the state
State-provided vehicles and fuel allocation
Comprehensive medical care — no ceiling, no review mechanism
Security detail and residential security infrastructure
Office allowances and administrative support — indefinitely
Travel allowances for official and semi-official engagements

Each item, taken individually, might be argued on its merits. Taken together, they constitute a publicly funded lifestyle guarantee for a tiny political class — unlimited in duration, uncapped in cost, and insulated from any form of public oversight. There is no sunset clause. There is no means test. There is no accountability mechanism. There is only the entitlement itself, permanently inscribed in law.

This is not institutional dignity. This is institutional self-dealing.

II.Seven Years of Oil — and This Is the Priority

Guyana struck first oil in commercial quantities in December 2019. In the years since, the country has become one of the fastest-growing economies on earth. Offshore oil revenues have transformed the government’s fiscal position. The Natural Resource Fund has received billions. GDP has surged. The projections are extraordinary.

And yet. Seven years into the oil era, too many Guyanese still cannot afford the basic necessities of a dignified life. The power cuts continue. The roads in hinterland regions remain impassable. Public hospitals operate under chronic resource constraints. Teachers and nurses earn wages that have not kept pace with the inflation that oil-linked construction booms have seeded into the cost of living. The Demerara Harbour Bridge replacement — a project of fundamental national infrastructure — has lurched through procurement delays and cost escalations that have never been satisfactorily explained.

The question this bill forces upon the public is not whether former presidents deserve comfort. The question is: when the government decides how to spend, who is always first in line? The answer, across seven years and dozens of procurement decisions, has been consistent. It is not the nurse. It is not the cane worker. It is not the Region 7 community waiting for a functional bridge. It is the political class — and those connected to it.

“The pattern is not the exception. The pattern is the policy.”

III. This Bill Does Not Stand Alone

This editorial has documented, across a sustained body of investigative work, a recurring architecture of governance in Guyana under the Ali administration. Individual cases may be dismissed as isolated errors or administrative oversight. Taken together, they constitute a pattern — and patterns do not lie.

The GPL-InterEnergy sole-source contract awarded power supply arrangements without competitive tender, insulating a preferred counterparty from scrutiny. The Karpowership agreement — negotiated in opacity, with contract terms that remain only partially public — committed the Guyanese treasury to a long-term liability whose full cost the public still cannot verify. The NDIA audit failures revealed systematic weaknesses in how infrastructure funds are tracked and reported, failures that benefit those who prefer accountability not to be exercised. The G-Mining and Reunion Gold transactions involved indirect asset transfers that raised serious questions about whether the state’s resource interests were adequately protected. The Puruni bridge routing — with its curious alignment toward certain private landholdings — suggested that even physical infrastructure decisions are not immune to private interest.

Now the Former Presidents’ Benefits Bill. Add to this the Guyana Development Bank Bill — which this outlet has separately examined — with its exclusion of Bank of Guyana oversight, its absence of an independent audit mandate, and its governance structure that creates institutionalized space for patronage. Each individual bill, each individual contract, can be argued in isolation. But the aggregate tells a story that no single item can conceal: a political class systematically using state instruments to secure wealth for itself and its network, dressed in the language of governance, development, and institutional necessity.

 

The Pattern Ledger: A Partial Record
GPL–InterEnergy: Sole-source power contract — no competitive tender
Karpowership/Karadeniz: Opaque contract terms, unverified liability exposure
NDIA audit failures: Systemic tracking failures enabling procurement opacity
G-Mining/Reunion Gold: Indirect asset transfer — taxation gap unaddressed
Puruni bridge routing: Infrastructure alignment serving private land interests
Guyana Development Bank Bill: BOG oversight excluded; patronage architecture embedded
Former Presidents’ Benefits Bill: Unlimited public-funded entitlements for the political class

IV.Naming the Architecture

What we are describing has a name. It is elite capture — the process by which a small political and economic class colonizes the institutions of the state and redirects their outputs toward private benefit. Elite capture does not announce itself. It does not draft legislation titled ‘A Bill to Enrich the Political Class.’ It drafts legislation that sounds reasonable, that invokes dignity and precedent, that appeals to the language of governance norms. The Former Presidents’ Benefits Bill sounds institutional. It is not. It is the latest mechanism in a long project.

The comparison with other resource-rich democracies is instructive. Botswana, often cited as a model of resource governance on the African continent, has structured its Pula Fund with explicit parliamentary oversight, published audits, and expenditure rules that link state spending to development indicators. Norway’s Government Pension Fund — the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund — operates under a statutory ethical framework that explicitly prohibits the kind of opacity that characterizes Guyana’s procurement environment. Indonesia, following the resource nationalism reforms of the 2000s, built anti-corruption institutional capacity as a deliberate counterweight to the patronage networks that had dominated the Suharto era.

None of these comparisons are perfect. But they share a common element: a deliberate decision that resource wealth belongs to the public, and that institutional design must enforce that principle against the natural gravity of elite capture. Guyana has made no such decision. Instead, it has made the opposite one — repeatedly, systematically, and now with a bill that asks the public to fund, in perpetuity, the comfort of the people who made those choices.

“In a country still battling poverty, such entitlement is not dignity. It is greed dressed up as governance.”

V.What Parliament Must Do

The 592 Guardian calls on Parliament to take the following actions, without delay and without equivocation:

 

1.Reject the Former Presidents’ Benefits Bill in its current form. No unlimited entitlements. No open-ended public liability. No perks package that cannot be audited and capped.

2.If retirement provisions for former heads of state are to be considered, bring a revised bill that specifies fixed ceilings on every category of expenditure, a review mechanism tied to national development benchmarks, and full transparency of cost to the public.

3.Commission an independent audit of all sole-source procurements awarded since January 2020, with findings tabled in Parliament and published in full within ninety days.

4.Amend the Guyana Development Bank Bill to restore Bank of Guyana oversight authority and mandate an independent external audit function before the institution is operationalised.

5.Establish a parliamentary select committee with cross-party composition and a public reporting mandate to review all contracts — energy, infrastructure, extractives — where competitive tender was waived.

6.Publish, in full and without redaction, the complete contractual terms of the Karpowership agreement and all GPL third-party power supply arrangements, so that the Guyanese public can assess what liabilities have been incurred in their name.

VI.The Bill Is the Message

Lincoln Lewis ended his letter with a moral observation, not a legal one. He was right to do so. The Former Presidents’ Benefits Bill is not primarily a budgetary matter, though it has budgetary implications. It is not primarily a constitutional matter, though constitutional questions surround it. It is, at its core, a statement about what this government believes the state exists to do — and who it believes the state exists to serve.

When oil revenues flow and the question is how to spend them, the answer this bill provides is: on us. On the people who already had power. On the class that already benefited from holding office. On the network that is already comfortable, and that would like to be comfortable forever, at public expense, without limit, without audit, without shame.

The Guyanese people deserve better than this. They deserve a state that invests oil wealth in nurses and roads and schools and bridges — in the infrastructure of a dignified life for ordinary citizens, not the infrastructure of permanent comfort for an extraordinary few. They deserve Parliament to look at this bill and call it what it is.

Lincoln Lewis called it greed dressed up as governance. He was right. This editorial stands with him — and demands that Parliament stand with the people.

The 592 Guardian Editorial Board

Accountability Journalism for Guyana