Even if Senators object to the resolution to increase Premier Alex Scott?s salary from $111,000 to $200,000 and enable full-time Ministers to pick up $150,000 they will ultimately not be able to stop it.

They have the ability to throw a spanner in the works to delay the pay hikes for politicians, but beyond that cannot reverse the decision by MPs in the House of Assembly to approve the recommendations to upgrade the salaries of politicians.

There is heightened interest in how the Senate will vote next Wednesday with the possibility that the draft resolution for the pay increases could be rejected in a 6?5 vote if the three independent Senators and three Opposition United Bermuda Party members join forces and vote against it.

According to the Ministers and Members of the Legislature (Salaries and Pensions) Act 1975, both the House of Assembly and the Senate have to agree the resolution for it to be effective.

When it came before the House of Assembly last week it was passed after 16 Progressive Labour Party MPs voted for it and 13 UBP MPs voted against it.

Quinton Edness, who served as an Minister for over 30 years and also had a two-year spell as a Senator in the early 1980s, believes Senators will approve the pay resolution. ?I think the principle of what is being done ? that members of the legislature and Senate should have a salary increase ? is correct. I support that principle,? he said.

?What the Government has not done is bring forward at this time details of the differential between a full-time and a part-time minister and how that would affect pension payments. So there is a huge gap in the information about how that is going to impact. ?The Government has said it is going to bring forward information about the pensions and it is for the Premier to bring the information about the differential between full-time and part-time Ministers.? He added: ?I don?t think the Senate will vote the resolution down.?

Former Clerk of the Legislature John Gilbert also does not believe independent Senators will reject the resolution.

He said: ?I can?t see the Senators doing that.

?The elected Parliamentarians have decided by majority vote that they want this. If the Senate rejected it the resolution would have to go back to the House of Assembly and then be brought back to Senate.?

Such a move would cause a delay of around six months before the resolution returned to the Senate to become law ? it could not be blocked a second time by the Upper House.