MEXICO CITY (CN) — Furthering his squabble with the country’s judiciary, Mexico’s president Tuesday accused Supreme Court justices of violating the Constitution by earning more money than he does.
“They earn four, five times what I earn,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said during his daily morning press conference. “The lawyers have looked into it, they’ve written up this document, and in five days the Supreme Court will have to give me a response — give us a response.”
The president announced that he will send a letter to the court via the Secretariat of the Interior asking them "why they are violating the Constitution."
He referenced article 127 of Mexico’s Constitution, which states that “No public servant will be able to receive remuneration … higher than that established for the president of the republic in the corresponding budget.”
López Obrador claimed he makes “around 140,000 to 150,000 pesos” per month ($105,000 per year) and compared that with the 600,000 pesos per month ($420,000 annually) he said Supreme Court justices earn.
Public records show that the president’s accusations are ostensibly correct, even if slightly flubbed. López Obrador earns around 174,000 pesos per month, according to Mexico’s 2023 federal budget. That same document states that the justices earn just over 460,000 pesos per month.
But figures that make it onto public documents in Mexico never tell the whole story, according to legal scholars and political analysts.
“What the president says is inexact,” said Javier Martín Reyes, a constitutional law professor at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. “Salary is one thing and remuneration is another.”
The tally of the president’s salary, benefits and other payments listed in the federal budget are incomplete, Reyes said.
Mexico’s Constitution defines “remuneration” as “any payment in cash or in kind, including allowances, Christmas bonuses, rewards, awards, incentives, commissions, compensations and any others.” In Spanish, the list includes multiple synonyms of the English words “rewards,” “bonuses” and “awards.”
“Just imagine if we consider all the payments in kind that a public servant who literally lives in a palace receives,” said Reyes.
López Obrador began his term by humbly choosing to continue living in his Mexico City home saying “one’s own house is better.” He moved to the National Palace in July 2019, justifying the decision by saying he would not personally use the entire facility but rather would live in a small apartment in the palace built by one of his main political rivals, former President Felipe Calderón.
Another of the president’s most bitter enemies, journalist Carlos Loret de Mola, reported in May that López Obrador’s real monthly salary is over 405,000 pesos. Pulling from public records requests and official reports, Loret de Mola included expenses such as rent, utilities, fuel for vehicles, service personnel, food, clothing and other goods and services that fall under the constitutional definition of “remuneration.”
In Mexico’s circuitous bureaucracy and polarized political landscape, however, the truth can difficult to pin down and ultimately immaterial.
Citing a common Mexican maxim — “Law made, trap set” — political analyst Carlos Bravo Regidor said it has always been true that some public servants end up earning more than the president.
“Yes, the Constitution says nobody should earn more than him, but they do,” he said. “Not exactly in terms of their actual salaries, but because of other compensations that are awarded to them.”
So while López Obrador may not be wrong in saying that Mexico’s Supreme Court justices are violating the Constitution, he is surely being opportunistic in bringing up the issue now, Bravo said.
The president has quarreled with justices over a number of cases that have threatened or overturned his contentious policies.
A questionable decision on his electricity reform in April 2022 prompted accusations that the executive branch was exerting undue influence on the judiciary. Tensions flared between the two branches last January when the court elected Norma Piña Hernández as its first woman as chief justice, rather than his own appointee, the scandal-plagued Yasmín Esquivel Mossa.
Tuesday’s sally came in response to a ruling last week that put the decisive kibosh on the electoral reform he had been pushing since late 2022.
“All the things he is fulminating against in the court have been going on since day one of his [term],” Bravo said. “He was OK with it when the court was not overturning his reforms.”
Interior Secretary Luis María Alcalde Luján confirmed Tuesday afternoon that she had sent the letter to the high court, citing a public administration law as giving her department the ability to oversee the tribunal.
Reyes told Courthouse News that the five-day time limit López Obrador gave the court is in no way legally binding.
“It’s incredible that they came out with that argument,” he said.
He called the move out on Twitter, showing the text of the law she cited, which gives the Secretariat of the Interior the authority to oversee the federal public administration, but not the Supreme Court.
“A real clown show,” Reyes tweeted.
Bravo said that the legally dubious argument ultimately does not matter.
“It’s just a way to keep the flame of grievance alive and to make noise,” he said. “It has worked wonders during these last five years.”
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