Grossly Inequitable Legislation

 

592GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 Grossly Inequitable Legislation

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OPINION BY : Hem Kumar November 2026

Former presidents should receive reasonable protection and support for legitimate continuing responsibilities. That proposition is neither controversial nor difficult to defend. What demands scrutiny is the proposed restoration of an expansive lifetime package encompassing utilities, household and administrative staff, medical treatment, security, state-maintained vehicles and tax privileges, without the express limits that previously bounded several benefits.

The distinction matters. The dignity of public office does not require an open-ended claim on public resources. Respect for former leaders does not require Parliament to suspend its judgment about necessity, proportionality and cost.

This is grossly inequitable legislation because it asks the public to underwrite exceptional protections for a small political category without first establishing why the proposed scope of those protections is justified.

Its central promise is insulation: protection from expenses and uncertainties that remain unavoidable features of ordinary life.

Before Parliament grants that protection, its members owe the country more than an appeal to presidential dignity.

Equality Within Privilege Is Not Equity

The government’s principal defense deserves to be stated accurately. Attorney General Anil Nandlall argues that the proposed legislation replicates the 2009 framework and restores equal treatment among former presidents.

But equal treatment among beneficiaries does not establish that the benefit itself is fair.

A privilege does not become proportionate because former presidents from opposing political parties can receive it. Nor does extending the same arrangement to future presidents establish its necessity. It establishes consistency within a category. The public question is whether the category’s entitlement is defensible in the first place.

Parliament must therefore answer two different questions: should former presidents be treated consistently, and what should taxpayers reasonably be required to provide?

The first cannot substitute for the second.

A government cannot define equity so narrowly that it begins and ends with the treatment of people who have occupied the highest office. It must explain the relationship between their continuing public responsibilities and the scale of support proposed.

Bipartisanship at the top is not the same thing as fairness throughout the country.

Dignity Is Not a Blank Cheque

There are sound reasons to provide security where an independent assessment establishes a continuing threat. There may be sound reasons to fund limited administrative assistance for genuine public duties.

Those purposes must be identified and costed. They do not automatically establish a case for an extensive package of household and personal benefits.

The reported provisions include lifetime utilities, household staff, clerical and technical staff, medical treatment and state-maintained vehicles. Each requires its own explanation. A justification for security is not, by itself, a justification for unrestricted household support. An argument for administrative assistance is not an argument for staffing without an express numerical ceiling.

The governing distinction is straightforward: is the state financing the continuing responsibilities of a former office, or underwriting the private circumstances of the person who once held it?

Public service should not become a permanent exemption from the discipline attached to public spending.

If a benefit serves a legitimate public purpose, the government should be able to define that purpose. If its scale is reasonable, the government should be able to explain the calculation. If expenditure is controlled, the government should be able to identify the control.

Dignity should survive those questions. An entitlement that cannot survive them should not become law.

Reform Does Not Require the Removal of Limits

The 2015 framework placed monetary or numerical restrictions on several benefits. Reporting on the proposed replacement identifies previous limits on utilities, household staff, security personnel, vehicles and medical reimbursement.

Not every old limit must remain unchanged forever. Prices rise. Medical needs differ. Security requirements should reflect professional assessments rather than political improvisation.

But none of that establishes a case for removing express limits.

If an allowance is outdated, revise it. If a medical ceiling is inadequate, establish an appropriate reimbursement framework. If security needs vary, create an independent assessment process. If continuing public duties require staff, define the duties and establish a defensible staffing allocation.

The choice is not between preserving every provision of 2015 untouched and restoring more open-ended entitlements.

There is a third course: reasonable support, transparent limits, independent review and enforceable accountability.

That is the course a government committed to both dignity and fiscal responsibility should be required to defend—or explain why it rejects.

The absence of a specified statutory cap does not necessarily mean that every other expenditure control disappears. But that is precisely why Parliament must identify which controls remain, who applies them and whether the public can see them working.

A Richer Treasury Does Not Make Every Claim Just

The objection should not depend on pretending that Guyana’s fiscal circumstances have stood still. The World Bank records extraordinary economic expansion following the start of oil production and Guyana’s movement into the high-income country group in 2023.

But greater national wealth does not abolish the obligation to choose fairly.

Indeed, it sharpens that obligation. New resources create an opportunity to broaden security across society, not merely to strengthen guarantees for those who have held power.

The government must not confuse its ability to finance a benefit with a sufficient reason to establish it.

Can the Treasury pay? That is one question.

Should this package take this form, with these entitlements and these safeguards? That is another.

The second question remains even if the answer to the first is yes.

Nor should citizens have to prove that this particular bill would otherwise finance the elimination of poverty. That is an artificial burden. The public is entitled to demand justification for expenditure without presenting an alternative national budget.

The government is proposing the obligation. The government must make the case.

Ordinary Need Must Not Be the Weaker Claim

The moral contrast is not between the prestige of a former president and the social standing of an ordinary citizen. It is between competing claims on public resources.

A pensioner’s household expenses do not become less consequential because they lack an official title. A family’s medical costs do not become less urgent because nobody has drafted a special entitlement around them.

Yet this legislation asks Parliament to secure an extensive package for a narrowly defined group.

Where is the published assessment placing that package alongside competing needs? What is its projected annual cost? What assumptions govern staffing, medical expenditure, vehicles and utilities? How will obligations change as the number of eligible beneficiaries changes?

Citizens should not have to excavate those answers after passage.

Nor should the argument be reduced to a contest over one poverty statistic. World Bank material identifies substantial historical poverty and warns that data gaps complicate assessment of subsequent progress. A current claim must therefore carry a date, a poverty threshold and an identifiable evidentiary basis.

That uncertainty is a reason for better public measurement—not a license to presume that deprivation has disappeared.

Private Enterprise Must Remain a Private Expense

The boundary between publicly supported retirement and private commercial activity requires particular clarity.

The government’s explanation acknowledges that the 2015 framework included the loss of benefits upon entry into private business, paid employment or trade. The proposed replacement therefore requires a clear account of how public support and private earnings will interact.

This is not an argument that former presidents should be prohibited from earning income or owning lawful businesses. It is an argument that taxpayers must not subsidize those businesses through benefits intended for a former head of state.

Where residential and commercial uses overlap, how will utility expenses be separated? What prevents publicly paid staff from performing commercial work? What rules govern vehicle use? Who audits compliance, and how can improperly claimed expenditure be recovered?

These questions do not establish that misuse has occurred. They establish what responsible legislation must anticipate.The public should not have to prove abuse before Parliament writes a law capable of preventing it.

Tax Privileges Require a Separate Defense

The reported bill provides for “a tax exemption status identical to that enjoyed by a serving President.”

That provision warrants its own explanation. It should not pass unnoticed within a longer list of benefits. Which taxes and duties are affected? Which income or transactions fall within the exemption? What commercial exclusions apply? What revenue would the state forgo?

The published wording does not justify assuming that every private enterprise or source of income becomes tax-exempt. Equally, citizens should not be asked to accept an important fiscal privilege without a precise explanation of its reach.

Protecting a former president is one proposition. Extending the tax status of a serving president beyond the presidency is another.

The government must defend both separately.

Parliament Must Answer Before It Votes

This bill should not proceed on reassurance alone.

Before passage, Parliament should require a published cost assessment, a benefit-by-benefit statement of public purpose, explicit financial and staffing limits, independently assessed security provision, enforceable exclusions for commercial use, and regular audited expenditure reporting that protects genuinely sensitive security information.

Where the government relies on acquired rights or constitutional protections, it should explain those obligations precisely. Its legal position on existing entitlements does not, by itself, settle the appropriate design of future benefits.

Every member supporting the bill should be prepared to defend its scope—not merely repeat the government’s description of its intention.

Party discipline may explain a vote. It does not remove responsibility for it.

The deepest objection is not that former presidents deserve indignity. It is that the dignity of the office is being invoked without an adequate public demonstration of where reasonable support ends and excessive privilege begins.

Public service must not become a lifetime claim whose limits the public cannot readily identify. On November 11, Parliament should refuse to make it one.