Dr Win­ford James

Max Al­bert and I con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sions on the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my ques­tion.

Our most re­cent ar­ti­cles have ex­am­ined the con­sti­tu­tion­al evo­lu­tion of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and plead­ed for fi­nan­cial and more re­spect­ful con­sid­er­a­tion for the men and women who helped build the in­sti­tu­tion. Those dis­cus­sions have led us to the in­ter­est­ing is­sues of statu­to­ry in­ter­pre­ta­tion and con­sti­tu­tion­al pol­i­cy.

Sec­tion 16 of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act 40 of 1996 pro­vides:

Sec­tion 16(2): “The salaries, al­lowances and oth­er con­di­tions of ser­vice of the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer, the Deputy Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer, the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary, oth­er Sec­re­taries and oth­er As­sem­bly­men and Coun­cil­lors shall be re­viewed by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion…”

And Sec­tion 16(5): “The As­sem­bly shall… es­tab­lish a con­trib­u­to­ry pen­sion scheme for Mem­bers.”

At first read­ing, the pro­vi­sions ap­pear straight­for­ward, but up­on clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion, they raise an im­por­tant ques­tion. Pen­sions are or­di­nar­i­ly re­gard­ed as part of the con­di­tions of ser­vice at­tached to pub­lic of­fice. If sub­sec­tion (2) places con­di­tions of ser­vice with­in the purview of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion, what then was Par­lia­ment seek­ing to achieve by ex­press­ly re­quir­ing the As­sem­bly it­self to es­tab­lish a con­trib­u­to­ry pen­sion scheme?

The is­sue is not an aca­d­e­m­ic one; it has to do with the prop­er in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the leg­is­la­tion. Par­lia­ment ex­press­ly refers to the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion in sub­sec­tion (2). Yet, in sub­sec­tion (5), it em­ploys en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent lan­guage.

It does not pro­vide that the As­sem­bly should es­tab­lish a pen­sion scheme sub­ject to the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion. It does not pro­vide that the scheme should be es­tab­lished in ac­cor­dance with di­rec­tions is­sued by the Com­mis­sion. And it does not pro­vide that the As­sem­bly should mere­ly ad­min­is­ter pen­sion arrange­ments de­ter­mined else­where. In­stead, Par­lia­ment im­pos­es an oblig­a­tion.

Read it again: The As­sem­bly shall es­tab­lish a con­trib­u­to­ry pen­sion scheme. The lan­guage is sig­nif­i­cant. The word “shall” or­di­nar­i­ly im­pos­es a du­ty and not a dis­cre­tion. Equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant is the word “es­tab­lish”. To es­tab­lish some­thing or­di­nar­i­ly means to cre­ate, for­mu­late, or­gan­ise, and put it in­to op­er­a­tion. The lan­guage, there­fore, sug­gests mean­ing­ful re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and not mere ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­e­cu­tion.

This in­ter­pre­ta­tion is al­so sup­port­ed by an es­tab­lished prin­ci­ple of statu­to­ry con­struc­tion. A spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sion or­di­nar­i­ly qual­i­fies or lim­its the op­er­a­tion of a more gen­er­al pro­vi­sion where both ad­dress the same sub­ject mat­ter.

Sub­sec­tion (2) ad­dress­es salaries, al­lowances and con­di­tions of ser­vice gen­er­al­ly. Sub­sec­tion (5) ad­dress­es pen­sion arrange­ments specif­i­cal­ly. How­ev­er, when one speaks of pen­sions, the lat­ter can on­ly arise from a salaried con­struct. They un­ques­tion­ably go hand in hand, and thus, the ques­tion fol­lows in the premis­es: Who should set the salaries, the As­sem­bly it­self or the Com­mis­sion?

The spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sion should there­fore be giv­en prac­ti­cal ef­fect and op­er­a­tion, as courts gen­er­al­ly avoid in­ter­pre­ta­tions that ren­der statu­to­ry lan­guage re­dun­dant, mean­ing­less, or de­void of prac­ti­cal con­se­quence.

On the oth­er hand, to in­ter­pret sub­sec­tion (5) as con­fer­ring no re­al au­thor­i­ty up­on the As­sem­bly would risk re­duc­ing the pro­vi­sion to sur­plusage and re­dun­dan­cy, and the pro­vi­sion would add noth­ing of sub­stance to sub­sec­tion (2). But Par­lia­ment is not or­di­nar­i­ly pre­sumed to leg­is­late in vain. So the ques­tion then be­comes: what mis­chief was Par­lia­ment seek­ing to ad­dress?

One plau­si­ble an­swer is that Par­lia­ment in­tend­ed the As­sem­bly to pos­sess mean­ing­ful re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in re­la­tion to the re­tire­ment arrange­ments of its Mem­bers and to have a mea­sure of in­sti­tu­tion­al au­ton­o­my over mat­ters af­fect­ing its own con­sti­tu­tion­al of­fice hold­ers.

The ques­tion of con­tri­bu­tions al­so re­quires care­ful ex­am­i­na­tion. A con­trib­u­to­ry pen­sion scheme does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean an ac­tu­ar­i­al­ly self-fi­nanc­ing scheme in which con­tri­bu­tions alone pur­chase life­time ben­e­fits. The law mere­ly re­quires that con­tri­bu­tions be made. Thus, it does not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­quire that con­tri­bu­tions alone must fi­nance all ben­e­fits or that State sup­ple­men­ta­tion is pro­hib­it­ed.

Many pen­sion arrange­ments ap­plic­a­ble to con­sti­tu­tion­al of­fice hold­ers op­er­ate up­on broad­er prin­ci­ples of con­sti­tu­tion­al recog­ni­tion. For­mer Min­is­ters who served a sin­gle par­lia­men­tary term re­ceive pen­sion and gra­tu­ity arrange­ments. Mem­bers of the Ju­di­cia­ry re­ceive re­tire­ment arrange­ments re­flect­ing the im­por­tance at­tached to ju­di­cial in­de­pen­dence and the main­te­nance of a dig­ni­fied stan­dard of liv­ing af­ter ac­tive ser­vice.

No one se­ri­ous­ly con­tends that a few years of ser­vice by such of­fice hold­ers ful­ly fi­nances ben­e­fits ex­tend­ing through­out re­tire­ment. The State recog­nis­es a broad­er prin­ci­ple. Con­sti­tu­tion­al ser­vice car­ries oblig­a­tions be­yond ac­tive ser­vice.

If Par­lia­ment in­tend­ed the As­sem­bly to es­tab­lish mean­ing­ful re­tire­ment arrange­ments for its mem­bers, then the con­trib­u­to­ry char­ac­ter of the scheme does not nec­es­sar­i­ly pre­clude pen­sion and gra­tu­ity arrange­ments sup­port­ed by con­sid­er­a­tions of con­sti­tu­tion­al recog­ni­tion and pub­lic pol­i­cy.

This is­sue, there­fore, tran­scends ques­tions of mon­ey. It con­cerns con­sti­tu­tion­al con­sis­ten­cy; it con­cerns the treat­ment of con­sti­tu­tion­al of­fice; and it con­cerns the es­teem ac­cord­ed to one of the Re­pub­lic’s prin­ci­pal de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions.

And the hu­man con­se­quences are ev­i­dent. For­mer As­sem­bly­man Stan­ley Beard spent years ad­vo­cat­ing re­form and has since passed away. For­mer Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer Jef­fer­son David­son and for­mer As­sem­bly­man Car­lyle Dick are al­so no longer with us.

Oth­ers, in­clud­ing Bene­dict Arm­strong, Reg­is Caruth, Max James, and Judy Bobb, re­main liv­ing re­minders of a ques­tion that has nev­er been sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly re­solved. The in­sti­tu­tion en­dured, the Re­pub­lic ben­e­fit­ed, but the leg­is­la­tion ap­pears to have con­tem­plat­ed some­thing more.

Whether the an­swer lies in leg­isla­tive amend­ment, a re­vised con­trib­u­to­ry scheme, or a re­con­sid­er­a­tion of the As­sem­bly’s pow­ers un­der sec­tion 16, the ques­tion re­mains: If the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly mat­ters, then shouldn’t the con­sti­tu­tion­al treat­ment of those who built it mat­ter as well?

To be con­tin­ued.

Dr Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment and pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s.

He has al­so writ­ten thou­sands of columns for all ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try.