Evo Morales' First Move
Evo Morales was recently elected president of Bolivia. He has just fulfilled a campaign promise by reducing his own pay by more than half. Further, since no public official may earn more than the President, this means that a full review will happen shortly.Mr Morales said the money saved would be used to increase the numbers of doctors and teachers.
I've no real comment on this yet; I just want to draw some attention to it because, being perfectly honest, I've never heard of any politician reducing his own pay before.
posted by Drew Shiel @ 1/27/2006 11:59:00 a.m.
1 Comments:
The Member of the Scottish Parliament Tommy Sheridan (Scottish Socialist Party) takes only £21,000 - the average salary. The idea being is that if the median income increases then so does his, so he's a real representative of his constituents. The other SSP SMPs do the same.
It also used to be the case with the Militant Labour MPs in Westminster (who Sheridan used to be a member of), before they were expelled from the Labour party in the late 80s.
In Ireland Joe Higgins TD also follows this policy and donates half his allocated salary to his party and "progressive campaigns".
This idea is also quite popular in other parties around the world too with strong links to workers movements.
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