Recently, I read some articles written by "A lawyer friend (whose name I have with-held)" on ministerial pension. He has made allegations that the highest possible pension receivable by a retired Minister is 2/3 his highest drawn salary.
WAHH SHIOK HOR! No wonder he so enthu come back to become MP… Oh wait, I'm not supposed to know who he is.
Firstly, while he is right about his numerical calculations of 8/27 (for 8 years of service) and 18/27 (for 18 years of service) being the minimum and maximum pension amounts, he never say that this is based on only the pensionable component, NOT the entire salary.
I did a search online, and I found that the pensionable component of the salary has been frozen since 1994, and remains so till this day. Any increment in salary since 1994 is added to the non-pensionable component, which effectively means that the pension quantum has not increased for 17 years.
Secondly, he says the pensions are exempt from income tax. Since I’m not as zai as Mr Big-Lawyer-without-a-name, I went to this Parliamentary Pensions Act that he was talking about, and tried to search.
At this stage, I am proud to say I am a true blue Singaporean that studied and stressed here for more than 10 lousy years. So I used the lazy *oops I mean efficient method to find the part about income tax.
I pressed ctl-F.
Nope, don’t have. The closest I got to was that the pension is only exempt from Estate Duty Tax under s. 10(6).
Thirdly and most importantly, MPs who become office holders after 1 Jan 1995 do not receive a pension, and are no longer on the pension scheme.
I know this is most important because this is the FIRST thing they say. At least they know normal people like us don’t bother to read the whole thing.
According to Section 2A of the Parliamentary Pensions Act (read with s. 2(1)), “a future Member shall not be eligible for any pension or gratuity under the provisions of this Act”, where "future Member" means a person “who becomes, by election or appointment, a Member at any time after 1st January 1995.”
In simple English, it means KNNBCCB the PAP is damn smart! They cut off the pension system in 1995, so even if Opposition take over, they also don’t have pension to take.
HAHAHAH no wonder a certain lawyer is damn dui right now! Missed the boat. By like 15 years.
Since the cut-off date is 1 Jan 1995, the only office holders in today’s Parliament eligible for pension are those who have been around since the 8th Parliament (6 June 1992 – 15 Dec 1996), and the present Parliament only has 8/87 members who are entitled to the pension. (Lao jiao Charles Chong is not entitled to the pension because he is not an office-holder)
(Source: http://www.parliament.gov.sg/history/8th-parliament)
In this "lawyer" article, he said “If you closed your eyes and threw a stone in Parliament House during a Parliamentary sitting … you will hit at least 1 or perhaps 2 with the stone ricocheting PAP chaps entitled to pensions.”
If he really threw the stone, I don’t think he is that zhun to hit the 1 out of 10 MP who have pension. With a total of 9 (NCMPs included) Opposition MPs in Parliament, he's more likely to hit one of them.
Then again, hitting their own isnt anything new.
