Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment MP Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day slammed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment’s tar­get­ing of for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young - and he de­clared the UNC a “gal­lop­ing dic­ta­tor­ship,” since the lat­est peo­ple be­ing fired by Gov­ern­ment were Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) con­trac­tors yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Low­er House de­bate of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025, Im­bert added, “The Fi­nance Min­is­ter said a few times this isn’t ‘ad hominem’ leg­is­la­tion (law that tar­gets a spe­cif­ic in­di­vid­ual). But he cit­ed no law, pro­duced no prece­dent...but the fact of the mat­ter is the is­sue with this bill, which the UNC is well aware of, is that it’s retroac­tive to March 10 2025. And there’s on­ly one per­son who could pos­si­bly be af­fect­ed by this retroac­tiv­i­ty.” “I’m cer­tain if this is test­ed in the courts ... when (the UNC) lose on the ‘ad hominem’ part, they want to go to the Con­sti­tu­tion and say it was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al for the par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual to be ap­point­ed prime min­is­ter!

“Well, I wish them luck with that! And if they’re so sure about that, why didn’t they chal­lenge the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the ap­point­ment of that par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual. They didn’t! You know why? Be­cause they’re not very sure about that point. We are quite sure the ap­point­ment was cor­rect.”

Im­bert sup­port­ed his view that the Pen­sion bill was ‘ad hominem’ law, cit­ing a 2016 Privy Coun­cil de­ci­sion con­cern­ing Steve Fer­gu­son, who’d claimed Sec­tion 34 was ad homi­nen and should be struck down. Im­bert not­ed the furore of protests against the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment over Sec­tion 34, in­clud­ing by unions who now have MPs in the cur­rent UNC Gov­ern­ment. He said the Privy Coun­cil judg­ment showed what ‘ad hominem’ law is and the Pen­sions bill tar­gets a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual.

“There­fore, based on the dic­ta in the Steve Fer­gu­son mat­ter, this is ‘ad hominem’ leg­is­la­tion, (Gov­ern­ment) can jump high or low, but the fact of the mat­ter is there’s on­ly one per­son who could pos­si­bly be af­fect­ed by the retroac­tive clause. No­body else! No for­mer prime min­is­ter oth­er than that sin­gle in­di­vid­ual is tar­get­ed!” Im­bert added.

He queried why the Fi­nance Min­is­ter didn’t state the law in oth­er places such as Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos, where some­one can serve as prime min­is­ter for “five sec­onds and be 20 years old” and get a pen­sion.

“This leg­is­la­tion is ev­i­dence of a gal­lop­ing dic­ta­tor­ship!” Im­bert de­clared.

“I un­der­stand all CEPEP con­trac­tors... over 10,000 peo­ple have been put on the bread­line by this wicked shame­less Gov­ern­ment! They fire the Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor! They fire all the WASA man­agers! They fire CEPEP con­trac­tors ... the de­pri­va­tion of in­come is across the board in T&T un­der this Gov­ern­ment!”

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein said Im­bert shouldn’t quote court judge­ments. He not­ed that Im­bert didn’t name Young and the Gov­ern­ment didn’t know who the leg­is­la­tion was ad hominem’ to. He said the law was gen­er­al, ap­ply­ing to all prime min­is­ters.

Ho­sein said, “(MP Im­bert) is prob­a­bly suf­fer­ing a lit­tle ta­ban­ca, as he act­ed about 50 times as prime min­is­ter. I be­lieve the (for­mer Prime Min­is­ter) gave him an Os­car for act­ing - but he’ll nev­er be prime min­is­ter of T&T!”

He added, “This bill is law­ful, pro­por­tion­ate and rea­son­ably jus­ti­fi­able in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety. We gave a com­mit­ment that we’d pro­tect the pub­lic in­ter­est and we’ll do so.”

Ho­sein slammed the PNM as the “weak­est Op­po­si­tion!”

“They lost their way! The PNM’s Ari­ma MP said that!” Ho­sein said, adding that shout­ing and scream­ing wouldn’t help Im­bert get his way.