Lower House refers civil retirement bill to Legal Committee

AMMAN — The Lower House on Sunday referred the draft civil retirement law to its Legal Committee for review.

In September 2014, His Majesty King Abdullah rejected the draft law after it was endorsed by the two Houses of Parliament and was supposed to grant MPs and Senators lifetime pension benefits.

The lawmakers’ move at the time was met with wide public outrage.

Under the law, MPs and senators granted themselves lifetime pensions equal to those of ministers, setting seven years of service in Parliament or civil service as an eligibility condition. In addition, the bill grants all lawmakers who were members of Parliament on May 20, 2010 and henceforth the same benefits. 

During Sunday’s session, some MPs criticised the referral of the law to the Legal Committee, insisting that the whole bill should be rejected.

Others criticised the government for not withdrawing the draft law from the House and coming up with new one that addresses the flaws in the old version that the King rejected.

Blaming the government for the whole fuss over the law, MP Mahmoud Kharabsheh (Balqa, 1st District) said the law aimed primarily at decreasing ministers’ salaries and not increasing lawmakers’ pensions, as most people think.

Urging his colleagues to reject the bill, Deputy Saad Hayel Srour (Northern Badia) said the law has a wider goal tackling the issue of civil retirement for all segments of society and not only MPs. 

MP Khalil Atiyeh (Amman, 1st District) supported the referral of the law to the committee so that it can remove the constitutional flaw, saying that the cost of lawmakers’ annual salaries is JD2 million and not JD50 million nor JD8 million, as “it was exaggerated”.

For MP Wafaa Bani Mustafa (Jerash, 1st District), the law should have been rejected, citing its unconstitutionality. 

The law was sent to the Constitutional Court for an opinion in 2013. In its reply, the court said members of Parliament are not entitled to pensions. 

In addition, it said that a law with a financial impact must not entail retroactive measures to change aspects that came into effect under previous laws and bring about an increase in expenditure.