Beckles: PNM couldn’t support bill targeting Young

Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says the Peo­ple 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.