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Monday, July 14, 2025

Beckles: PNM couldn’t support bill targeting Young

by

15 days ago
20250629
Opposition Leader Pennelope Beckles contributes to the debate on the Prime Minister’s Pension (Amendment) Bill, 2025, on Friday.

Opposition Leader Pennelope Beckles contributes to the debate on the Prime Minister’s Pension (Amendment) Bill, 2025, on Friday.

ROGER JACOB

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ab­stained from vot­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025, be­cause they be­lieved it was rushed, not sig­nif­i­cant­ly thought out and was tar­get­ed at one in­di­vid­ual—name­ly MP and for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

“Our po­si­tion is, while we agree that re­form is nec­es­sary, we think this is rushed, we think it is tar­get­ed at one in­di­vid­ual, we think the leg­is­la­tion hasn’t been suf­fi­cient­ly thought out, and they are be­ing very di­vi­sive by tak­ing this par­tic­u­lar ap­proach. That is why we thought it nec­es­sary to make it abun­dant­ly clear that we took the po­si­tion, there­fore, to ab­stain,” Beck­les said in a me­dia af­ter Fri­day’s sit­ting of Par­lia­ment, where the bill was de­bat­ed and even­tu­al­ly passed.

Beck­les al­so ques­tioned whether the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to the Pen­sion Bill meant the Pres­i­dent’s and Chief Jus­tice’s pen­sions could now be tak­en away.

Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land said, “There is a part in the bill, the tier sys­tem, we have no is­sue with sup­port­ing that part … we had a prob­lem with the retroac­tive, so that is why we took that po­si­tion, be­cause we did not op­pose the bill in its en­tire­ty.”

The pas­sage of the bill re­quired sup­port from three-fifths of the 41 MPs in the House. It re­ceived more than the re­quired 24—a to­tal of 27 votes from the 25 UNC and two TPP MPs. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo, who pre­sent­ed the bill ear­li­er, was ab­sent when the vote took place. It was passed with­out amend­ments.

The PNM had sought re­moval of the clause that made the bill retroac­tive to March 10, 2025. It was re­quest­ed by PNM MP Scot­land but fol­low­ing a query by Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein, it was not al­lowed as it was not pro­vid­ed in writ­ing.

The bill’s pass­ing now means that Young, who was ap­point­ed PM on March 17, 2025, fol­low­ing the March 16 res­ig­na­tion of for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, will not be able to ac­cess a PM’s pen­sion.

At an ear­li­er me­dia con­fer­ence dur­ing the tea break of the sit­ting, for­mer min­is­ter and now Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the on­go­ing pen­sions and salaries de­bate. He ar­gued that if mem­bers of the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion tru­ly op­posed the pro­posed in­creas­es across the board, they now had the pow­er to re­ject or redi­rect them.

“As a lawyer, I can tell you, all of the protests that the Gov­ern­ment now made when they were in op­po­si­tion about the in­crease in salaries from the SRC re­port—they can im­me­di­ate­ly, by con­sent, say that they will not take the salary ac­crued to them,” he said.

Al-Rawi said min­is­ters could do­nate their in­creased salaries to ini­tia­tives like the Chil­dren’s Life Fund or refuse the in­crease through a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion. He al­so de­fend­ed the con­cept of a pro­gres­sive trig­ger for pen­sions, stat­ing that a sit­ting prime min­is­ter should not re­ceive both a full pen­sion and a salary.


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