Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Stu­art Young’s pen­sion as a for­mer prime min­is­ter will be cut off as a re­sult of to­day’s Par­lia­ment de­bate on leg­is­la­tion propos­ing that a per­son must serve in the po­si­tion for at least one year from the date of ap­point­ment to be el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive the ben­e­fit.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025, which con­tains this mea­sure, al­so pro­pos­es that the bill will come in­to force on March 10, 2025 - there­by giv­ing it retroac­tive ef­fect.

The bill will al­so stip­u­late that a prime min­is­ter must serve for four years to get the full pen­sion of $87,847 for the rest of their life - and will on­ly get a por­tion if they serve less.

The bill di­rect­ly af­fects for­mer prime min­is­ter Young, who was ap­point­ed on March 17, 2025.

He served as prime min­is­ter for just over five weeks un­til the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, when the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment was de­feat­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

The bill fol­lows through on con­cerns raised by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar when she was op­po­si­tion leader in Jan­u­ary.

She had ob­ject­ed to Young be­ing “foist­ed on the pub­lic as prime min­is­ter” with­out an elec­tion and be­ing en­ti­tled to col­lect a prime min­is­te­r­i­al pen­sion for the rest of his life if he served “just one day, a few hours, weeks or months.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed the cur­rent law lacks any qual­i­fy­ing age to be el­i­gi­ble for a prime min­is­ter’s pen­sion. She said that meant Young would have im­me­di­ate­ly be­come en­ti­tled to a prime min­is­ter’s pen­sion “for the rest of his life.” She said the month­ly life­time pen­sion which he’d re­ceive ex­ceed­ed $87,847—to­talling $1 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly. Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­gued that oth­er par­lia­men­tar­i­ans must at­tain the age of 55 to ob­tain a pen­sion, pub­lic ser­vants must reach 60 and se­nior cit­i­zens must be 65 to qual­i­fy for a pen­sion.

Tiered pen­sion cal­cu­la­tion

The bill seeks to make two sig­nif­i­cant amend­ments which will not on­ly af­fect Young but all fu­ture prime min­is­ters.

It in­tro­duces the thresh­old re­quire­ment of min­i­mum ser­vice for at least one year to be el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive a pen­sion and al­so de­ter­mines the pen­sion amount cal­cu­lat­ed on a cer­tain for­mu­la.

Ac­cord­ing to the in­for­ma­tion on the bill, it first seeks to in­tro­duce the Min­i­mum Ser­vice Re­quire­ment chang­ing the cur­rent law on el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for pay­ment.

Un­der sec­tion 3 of the act, a per­son ap­point­ed as prime min­is­ter on or af­ter Au­gust 31, 1962, au­to­mat­i­cal­ly qual­i­fies for a pen­sion, re­gard­less of the length of ser­vice.

How­ev­er, a clause pro­posed will amend sec­tion 3 by in­tro­duc­ing the re­quire­ment that a per­son must serve as prime min­is­ter “for at least one year from the date of ap­point­ment” in or­der to be el­i­gi­ble for the pen­sion.

The sec­ond amend­ment in­tro­duces a Tiered Pen­sion Cal­cu­la­tion re­gard­ing the amount to be re­ceived.

Since Sec­tion 4 of the Act states that a for­mer prime min­is­ter is en­ti­tled to re­ceive the full amount of the high­est an­nu­al rate of salary they were paid at any time while serv­ing in that role, an­oth­er pro­posed clause will re­peal the au­to­mat­ic full en­ti­tle­ment.

It will be re­placed with a sys­tem where the pen­sion will be cal­cu­lat­ed based on the length of ser­vice, ac­cord­ing to the fol­low­ing tiered struc­ture:

Length of Ser­vice as prime min­is­ter from date of ap­point­ment and Pro­por­tion of High­est An­nu­al Salary Payable as Pen­sion:

Not less than 1 year - One-third

Not less than 2 years - One-half.

Not less than 3 years -Two-thirds

Not less than 4 years - Full amount

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House Bar­ry Padarath re­ferred all ques­tions about the bill to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, who did not re­spond. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo, who’s pi­lot­ing the bill, al­so did not re­ply.

Spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage

Pas­sage of the bill re­quires a three-fifths spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote in both the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (HOR) and the Sen­ate.

The bill there­fore re­quires a to­tal of at least 24 votes for pas­sage in the HOR and 18 in the Sen­ate.

There are 26 Gov­ern­ment MPs in the House with an­oth­er two from the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty. The Op­po­si­tion has 13 votes.

There­fore, the bill will like­ly be passed in the HOR once all on the Gov­ern­ment side are present.

In the Sen­ate, the Gov­ern­ment has 16 votes, the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors nine and the Op­po­si­tion six.

The PNM was cau­cus­ing on the bill yes­ter­day.