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.