Former Attorney General Cajeton Hood has identified current Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell as the only person still actively involved in politics who was responsible for implementing the controversial Pension Disqualification Act that barred public sector employees from getting a pension that is provided for in the Grenada Constitution.
Dr. Mitchell held the post of Minister of Public Utilities and Works in the Herbert Blaize-led New National Party (NNP) that used the Grenada Parliament shortly after the 1984 general election to attempt to give life to the controversial act.
The 1979-83 Grenada Revolution of late Marxist leader Maurice Bishop had suspended the Constitution and passed a People’s Law known as the Pension Disqualification act to prevent civil servants from receiving a pension as provided for in the constitution.
Bishop’s ill-fated People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) had created the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) to provide pension and other benefits to workers on the island.
According to Hood after the demise of the Grenada Revolution when Bishop was executed in a bloody palace coup by a hardline Marxist faction led by ex-deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard the Pension Disqualification law “was dead” but Dr. Mitchell was part of the NNP regime in the 1984-90 period that sought to validate this unconstitutional law.
“If you don’t believe me go back and check your history,” he quipped.
Hood told THE NEW TODAY: “They could have allowed that (PRG law) to die. It is fitting that his (Dr. Mitchell) legacy should end with the court pronouncing that he did something unconstitutional in 1985. That is the point.”
The former Attorney-General said when Grenada returned to democratic rule of law following four-and-a-half years of non-elected Marxist rule by Bishop who came to power in a coup d’etat against the elected Eric Gairy labour party government, there was no need to try and give legal teeth to the Pension Disqualification act.
“The PRG was free to say what they want, do what they want,” he said.
According to Hood, even the NIS law passed by the PRG “has many things in it that are unconstitutional and cannot become effective”.
Hood who was a senior civil servant during the 1984-90 term in office of the Blaize-led government also commented on the self-styled “Golden Handshake” that the NNP was offering public sector employees in an effort to address a bloated civil service outside of the constitutionally recognised pension act.
This move, he said is the genesis for the historic and landmark Irwin McQueen high court matter in which the Pension issue was addressed by the high court and court of appeal.
He said the powers-of-the-day tried to give McQueen a financial package less than what he was entitled to under the constitution.
According to Hood, the public officer whose post was being abolished as part of a so-called re-organisation of the civil service was entitled to be treated as if he had retired from the service with full pension.
In ruling against the State on the matter, the then Chief Justice of the OECS, Sir Dennis Byron indicated that the “golden handshake” passed by Parliament by the Blaize government cannot be substituted for McQueen’s right under the constitution because his post was removed from re-organisation of the public service.
Attorney Hood told THE NEW TODAY in a recent address to members of the Grenada Union of Teachers (GUT) at a session in St Mark, he reminded them that one of the significant points made by Justice Byron in the McQueen case is that “you cannot validate a law that was unconstitutional in itself and a constitutional Parliament cannot give life to a law that they could not pass for themselves.
You could not pass the Pension Disqualification act in this Parliament because what the act sought to do was to remove Pension entitlements in it (The Constitution) and this is in direct conflict with the Constitution,” he said.
Three weeks ago, local high court judge, Justice Raulston Glasgow handed down a ruling in favour of public sector unions that declared the Pension Disqualification act of the PRG to be null and void and for retired public officers to lay claim to millions of dollars due to them covering a 39-year-old period.
The Mitchell government has not given a ball point figure but estimated that the cost to the State is well over one billion E.C dollars.