De la Bastide, Mc Nish back retrospective PM pension bill

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Two In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors have backed Gov­ern­ment’s con­tro­ver­sial bid to ap­ply a law retroac­tive­ly to re­voke a prime min­is­te­r­i­al pen­sion for Stu­art Young, who held of­fice for just 30 days.

Michael Si­mon de la Bastide, SC, and Court­ney Mc Nish spoke in sup­port of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sions (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025, which would dis­qual­i­fy for­mer prime min­is­ters from re­ceiv­ing pen­sions if they served less than one year and demit­ted of­fice af­ter March 10.

Young be­came prime min­is­ter on March 17, 2025, and served un­til April 28, when the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment lost the Gen­er­al Elec­tion. Un­der the cur­rent law, he qual­i­fies for a pen­sion of $87,000 a month.

De­bat­ing the bill in the Sen­ate, de la Bastide found it com­mend­able that Gov­ern­ment brought the mea­sure now, and sup­port­ed the pro­posed tiered sys­tem.

He ex­plained that the cur­rent Act en­ti­tles any for­mer prime min­is­ter to the full pen­sion with­out re­gard to their time in of­fice, some­thing he de­scribed as un­fair and un­de­served in the eyes of “most right-mind­ed peo­ple.”

The bill’s ret­ro­spec­tive clause, which has drawn le­gal scruti­ny, would re­voke the pen­sion of any prime min­is­ter who served for less than a year af­ter March 10, 2025. This af­fects on­ly Young.

“There is on­ly one per­son, as we know as of to­day, who has left the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter since March 10. There is no doubt in my mind that the Act has the ef­fect of de­priv­ing him of prop­er­ty and with­out com­pen­sa­tion. I think, in my view, with­out due process of law, and that would im­pinge on his right un­der Sec­tion 4A of the Con­sti­tu­tion—of that fun­da­men­tal hu­man right,” de la Bastide said.

How­ev­er, de la Bastide ar­gued that the law would not vi­o­late the Con­sti­tu­tion.

He ac­knowl­edged Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Viera’s con­cerns about the rule of law but dis­agreed that the ret­ro­spec­tive na­ture vi­o­lates it. While ret­ro­spec­tive laws of­ten stir le­gal and eth­i­cal ques­tions, they are not in­her­ent­ly un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. De la Bastide said Par­lia­ment has the pow­er to act and cor­rect the mis­take that al­lowed a full pen­sion for such brief ser­vice.

Mc Nish, who spoke ear­li­er in the de­bate, said the coun­try is watch­ing how Par­lia­ment han­dles the mat­ter. He shared that peo­ple he con­sid­ered friends had called him in dis­be­lief yes­ter­day as he pre­pared for the de­bate.

“One tried to dis­guise his voice, say­ing to me, ‘Court­ney, you can­not let the man get a mil­lion dol­lars a year for 30 days’ ser­vice.’ An­oth­er per­son called with the same ex­pres­sion.”

He sug­gest­ed the is­sue might have been avoid­ed had Young sim­ply de­clined the pen­sion.

“If he had said that, we would not be here to­day. It is not my busi­ness to say what he should do, but by him not do­ing that, we are now caught in a dis­cus­sion of what is fair and what is the law.”

Mc Nish said ret­ro­spec­tive laws are not al­ways un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and can be jus­ti­fied in the pub­lic in­ter­est. He ad­mit­ted gov­ern­ments had over­looked this le­gal gap for 56 years but be­lieved now was the time to act.

With for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s 47 per cent salary in­crease still haunt­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste de­fend­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sions (Amend­ment) Bill 2025 as a step to­ward fair­ness for the work­ing class.

Bap­tiste said the last PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion found “cre­ative” ways to im­prove pen­sion ben­e­fits for prime min­is­ters while ig­nor­ing decades-long pleas from work­ers in the pub­lic ser­vice.

“I have seen what has hap­pened, we all have eyes, us­ing the SRC, what hap­pened with the Prime Min­is­ter’s pen­sion. They got a nice bounce to the ounce,” Bap­tiste said.

Con­trast­ing Row­ley’s fi­nal pay bump with the plight of a for­mer Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) hos­pi­tal­i­ty work­er, Bap­tiste read from a What­sApp mes­sage the re­tired em­ploy­ee had sent him. The in­di­vid­ual, now re­cov­er­ing from a stroke, re­ceived no pen­sion af­ter 18 years of ser­vice.

The for­mer Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent said many work­ers at WASA and the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion had served for over a decade yet were not el­i­gi­ble for pen­sions at age 60. Dai­ly-rat­ed em­ploy­ees in cen­tral gov­ern­ment, he added, have wait­ed since 1994 for a promised pen­sion plan.

“Some­how, we are com­fort­able say­ing one day equals $1 mil­lion for the rest of your life, every year. When we treat with the av­er­age work­er, col­lec­tive­ly thou­sands un­der the cen­tral gov­ern­ment, they are sim­ply not en­ti­tled to a pen­sion.”

He said the bill would not dis­ad­van­tage any­one and re­ject­ed claims that it un­fair­ly tar­get­ed any in­di­vid­ual.

“No one could jus­ti­fy a fleet­ing six weeks equal a mil­lion dol­lars a year. That sim­ply can­not be jus­ti­fied—not to the tax­pay­ers of this coun­try.”

Bap­tiste cit­ed pen­sion rules for heads of gov­ern­ment in sev­er­al oth­er na­tions like Aus­tralia, South Africa and Sin­ga­pore.

“These na­tion­al ex­am­ples af­firm the prin­ci­ples we are es­tab­lish­ing here to­day: pen­sions must be earned, not gift­ed,” Bap­tiste said.

Mak­ing his in­au­gur­al con­tri­bu­tion as Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Sen­ate, Sen­a­tor Dar­rell Al­la­har said the amend­ment was not po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

“In the ab­sence of any ev­i­dence of any state­ments com­ing from the Gov­ern­ment side of mal­ice, or some sort of Gov­ern­ment po­lit­i­cal mo­tive, those state­ments show un­for­tu­nate­ly a pre­dis­po­si­tion against the UNC Gov­ern­ment, and I am very, very dis­ap­point­ed.”

Al­la­har said the ret­ro­spec­tive clause in the bill, while con­tentious, is not “ad hominem” in the le­gal sense. He main­tained that Par­lia­ment has the le­gal au­thor­i­ty to en­act retroac­tive laws, even those af­fect­ing fun­da­men­tal rights, so long as there is no ev­i­dence of mal­ice.