Court judgments (1)

I gathered from the Monday Law Report of February 19 and from subsequent correspondence by readers, that pensioners who also receive a service pension besides a reduced social security retirement pension despite having paid, like everyone else, the mandatory National Insurance contributions, have been discriminated against by the Courts of Justice as well as by the European case-law. Far-fetched and enigmatic judgments do not satisfy society as they should.

Moreover, most judgments, if not all, are written in obscurantist Maltese jargon, which is not easily understood and which no professor of Maltese has ever dared to challenge.

Invoking Plato or any other latter-day philosopher will not do the trick. Invoking our political parties, who all promise heaven on earth, will! In fact, in 1997 the truncated MLP government started to redeem this service pension anomaly by means of annual increases. Unfortunately, these suffering pensioners received only one increase as the PN stopped this scheme on regaining power in 1998.

What is interesting to note is that our courts of justice failed to comment on the discrimination clause in the Social Security Act that permits the Director of Social Security to make such discriminatory deductions from one's entitlement to a two-thirds pension.

In an article in the Times Weekender of April 21, Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera is reported to have said that she strongly believes that people deserve a judgment that explains exactly why their decision is what it is. I think so, too!