Dear Editor,
The noise surrounding the Former Presidents (Benefits and Other Facilities) Bill 2026[1] has been mistaken for debate, when there is none of substance, and it rests on the wrong premise. Its critics treat the Bill as a new and open-ended entitlement. It is neither. It repeals the 2015 Act and restores the framework of 2009, under which every former President before 2015 has been supported, and it does so through a defined list of entitlements, not a blank cheque.
Consider what the text actually provides. Clause 2 lists specific facilities: utilities at “his or her place of residence”, household staff, clerical support on request, medical attendance or reimbursement, security, State-maintained vehicles, toll-free road transportation, a vacation allowance benchmarked to the judiciary, and a tax status identical to that of a serving President. Clause 3 allows regulations only subject to negative resolution of the National Assembly. The absence of a dollar ceiling is not the absence of limits. Each item is tied to a category, a purpose and a place of residence.
That wording also answers the claim that the Bill will fund post-retirement business ventures. The Bill refers to a residence, singular. Although it is not spelled out, the distinction between residential consumption and commercial activity is a settled one, and other regulations and legislation already govern the use of public resources and commercial utility supply. The issue is not what the Bill allows, but whether existing law will be enforced. A utility benefit for a home cannot reasonably be read as a subsidy for an enterprise.
On the 2015 amendment, the legal position was contested. The 2015 Act did repeal and replace the 2009 Act, and it contained specific limits and conditions, including cessation of benefits in certain circumstances. The Bill’s proponents argue that the 2015 Act could not retrospectively remove benefits already accrued under the 2009 framework. On that reading, Former Presidents under the 2009 Act have continued to enjoy those benefits, while the 2015 restrictions apply to the President then in office, who would later retire, and to all future Presidents.
This is where the Government’s position becomes legally awkward. Former President David Granger’s serious medical condition[2] is widely known, and his circumstances bring the uncertainty between the 2009 framework and the restrictions introduced in 2015 into practical focus. The Government therefore faced two options: continue relying on an arrangement whose statutory footing remains contested, or restore a clear and equal statutory basis for support to former Presidents. The latter is the more defensible course.
This author contends that the timing could have been better. The Government is only one year into its term, and a Bill of this nature would have attracted less suspicion had it come nearer to the end of that term. But timing is a matter of political optics. It does not alter the legal merit of the measure, and it does not outweigh the case for ending an irregular arrangement.
With that in mind, the proportionality of the debate is the real concern. The same voices raising alarm over a dignified retirement framework for former heads of State, one that is comparable to arrangements elsewhere, including the United States, where former Presidents receive a pension, staff, health cover and lifetime security protection, should be applying at least equal energy to the allegation by the Opposition Leader of tax fraud in the region of G$190 billion[3].
Consider the scale. A pension of G$2 million a month is G$24 million a year. Add staff, security, utilities, medical cover and vehicles, and G$50 million a year is a deliberately generous estimate. Divide G$190 billion by G$50 million and the result is 3,800 years of a former President’s entire package. The first is a benefit with a statutory basis, a published text and a debate in Parliament. The second is an allegation of theft from the public purse. A critic who is loud on the first and silent on the second is not defending the taxpayer. Fiscal accountability that is selective is not accountability.
The determining factor is not the existence of a retirement framework for former Presidents, but whether public money is governed by law, enforced consistently, and scrutinised in proportion to the amounts at risk. This is not a debate about perks. It is a test of institutional discipline, and on that test, the larger concern lies elsewhere.
The Civic Observer
References
- Silence over G$190B is the bigger scandal in Guyana Times, November 13, 2026