Gail Alexan­der

The Gov­ern­ment should foot the bill for judges' med­ical treat­ment in pri­vate fa­cil­i­ties–up to a cer­tain lim­it–and pay them for us­ing their ex­per­tise to scru­ti­nise leg­is­la­tion in Par­lia­ment, along with in­creas­ing their re­tire­ment ben­e­fits, says In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Dhanayshar Ma­habir.Ma­habir made the sug­ges­tions in yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on leg­is­la­tion to in­crease ben­e­fits for re­tired judges and MPs.

Say­ing he agreed with the leg­is­la­tion, he said with­out mon­ey "man can't live" and the ju­di­cia­ry need­ed to at­tract le­gal schol­ars.Ma­habir al­so said longevi­ty was a fac­tor, since peo­ple of­ten got ill be­fore they died and med­ical treat­ment was ex­pen­sive. He called on the Gov­ern­ment to at least con­sid­er de­fray­ing the cost of med­ical care in pri­vate health fa­cil­i­ties for re­tired judges, up to a sum equiv­a­lent to a month of their new salary lev­els.

Since re­tired judges could not prac­tise for ten years af­ter re­tir­ing, Ma­habir, an econ­o­mist, said the Gov­ern­ment should al­so con­sid­er us­ing their le­gal ex­per­tise and pay­ing them a stipend as part of a par­lia­men­tary ju­di­cial pool to scru­ti­nise and go over the fine points of leg­is­la­tion.Ma­habir said this was rec­om­mend­ed rather than hav­ing leg­is­la­tors con­tin­ue to "wran­gle" over bills in the com­mit­tee fine-tun­ing stage of par­lia­men­tary work.

"Make use of this re­source," he said. "Six­ty-five is the new 45."He al­so not­ed that PNM sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi scold­ed an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor in a re­cent de­bate, telling that per­son, "Let the of­fi­cers of the court speak."Ma­habir not­ed the Gov­ern­ment had al­lo­cat­ed $12 mil­lion for pay­ments for the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch and So­ca Monarch shows. He said if re­tired judges were paid a pen­sion of $30,000 a month, the to­tal for the 30 re­tired judges an­nu­al­ly would be the same as that al­lo­cat­ed for the shows.

"We're pay­ing more to sup­port Chut­ney So­ca Monarch than sup­port­ing re­tired judges," he said.Ma­habir said the ju­di­cia­ry was one sec­tor of stel­lar per­for­mance among in­sti­tu­tions that were crum­bling and fail­ing, cit­ing the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, po­lice and Se­cu­ri­ties Ex­change Com­mis­sion. He said the ju­di­cia­ry should in­flu­ence oth­er arms to per­form bet­ter.