By: Staff Writer
July 1, 2025
Former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Stuart Young will not receive a prime ministerial pension after the government passed legislation blocking persons who sat in the chair for less than one year.
The Prime Minister’s Pension (Amendment) Bill, 2025, was approved on Friday evening with 27 votes from the ruling United National Congress (UNC) and its coalition partner, the Tobago People’s Party (TPP). The opposition People’s National Movement (PNM), which previously held power, abstained from the vote.
The Bill introduced a minimum service requirement of one year for a prime minister to be eligible for any pension. It also replaced the previous system — which granted a full pension regardless of time served — with a tiered structure based on length of service:
- 1 to <2 years: One-third of the full pension
- 2 to <3 years: One-half
- 3 to <4 years: Three-quarters
- 4 or more years: full pension
Passage of the bill required support from three-fifths of the 41 MPs. It received more than the required 24: a total of 27 votes from the 25 UNC and two TPP MPs.
Stuart, who was appointed Prime Minister on March 17, 2025 after his predecessor Dr Keith Rowley decided to quit politics after nearly 35 years of public service after having first being elected in 1991 and leading the then governing People’s National Movement (PNM) from 2010.
Young was absent from Friday’s debate as a form of protest. His PNM colleagues, notably current opposition leader Penelope Beckles, said that they could not support a Bill that targeted 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.