He does, but…
The coordinators of the opposition parties in the Senate said ‘yes’ to the presidential initiative to end the million-dollar pensions of former officials. The vote in favor is there, ready for this week. But get ready, because the ‘but’ is big and technical.
Everyone agrees: it is a scandal that there are pensions of up to one million pesos a month. That has to go away. However, the real discussion, the one that will cause war, is not what, but how.
The problem is in the formula
This is where the senators take out their red pencils. The government proposal wants the maximum limit of a pension to be the salary of the President of the Republic. For the opposition, that is technical and legal nonsense.
Ricardo Anaya (PAN) was direct:
“The initiative is made with legs. It is very poorly planned… if tomorrow this president or whoever is president… decides to raise their salary, then pensions increase.”
His criticism is simple: tying pensions to the presidential salary creates a volatile and unserious mechanism. Their proposal is to use the UMAS (Units of Measurement and Update), as is already done with the ISSSTE and IMSS pensions. That is, use a fixed rule, not a number that can change at a presidential whim.
The PRI, for its part, will also vote in favor. Manuel Añorve was clear: “We will always be in favor of millionaire pensions going down.” But he also issued his warning: we must review the issue of retroactivity so as not to violate the Constitution.
Meanwhile, Movimiento Ciudadano puts its finger on another sore spot. Clemente Castañeda warns that this does not solve the real problem:
“The problem is not only in the stratospheric pensions, but in the entire pension system.”
For him, this is a media patch that does not address the fragmentation and financial unsustainability of the entire system.
So there you have it. Everyone agrees on the headline: golden pensions are over. But behind the consensus there is a fight over the details that could dilute or distort the entire reform. The battle for pensions will be fought in technical committees, not in speeches.
