Peruvian President Alan Garcia cut government salaries, including his own, on Monday, three days after announcing a long list of austerity measures in his inaugural address.
Garcia, whose previous 1985-1990 government was plagued by mismanagement and corruption that left Peru nearly bankrupt, blasted outgoing president Alejandro Toledo for spending lavishly while failing to help Peru's poor.
In a decree published in the official newspaper El Peruano, Garcia reduced his monthly paycheck to just over US$5,000, a 60 percent pay cut. Lawmakers saw their salaries reduced by nearly 40 percent to about the same level.
The decree also lowered wages for regional presidents, mayors, municipal councilors and their deputies.
Garcia said an emergency decree would be issued in the coming days to implement the pay cuts immediately instead of in January, saving the country US$16.2 million by year's end.
Jorge del Castillo, Garcia's Cabinet chief, said on Monday that the government would impose sanctions on public officials who spend more than their budgets.
Toledo five years ago set his monthly salary at US$18,000, the highest of any Latin American president, but later reduced it under intense public pressure.
Across Latin America, offering to lower public salaries plays well with voters, but many analysts question whether the money saved is substantial enough to help the needy.
Upon taking office in January, Bolivian President Evo Morales cut his salary by more than half and declared no Cabinet minister can collect a higher wage than his -- US$1,875 a month -- with the savings to be used to hire more public school teachers.
Mexico's presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador -- who is now in a heated battle over contested election results -- has vowed to pay expanded social programs by cutting the inflated salaries of bureaucrats and politicians and going after wealthy tax deadbeats.
Arturo Woodman, a prominent former Peruvian banking executive, said there is a general sense in Peru that public salaries should be cut as "a corrective measure" for past abuses.
But Woodman said slashing paychecks has its risks, including "attracting corruption."
"It must be well thought out to avoid a loss of interest in public service by upstanding people who might go elsewhere because of the issue of making extra income," Woodman said.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province