Party leader urges colleagues to donate massive Christmas bonus

The president of Mexico's leftist party PRD, Alejandra Barrales, urged her fellow party members to practice what they preach and donate the 500 thousand peso Christmas bonus that all 500 members of Mexico's lower house of Congress will receive this year.

“We're asking you to be empathetic towards the difficult situation many of our citizens currently live in,” she said.

During an interview at an event hosted by her political party at the Mexico City Museum, the legislator clarified that she's not asking her colleagues to reject the full amount of the bonuses, but instead use that money on a worthy cause, which, she says, there are many in Mexico.

Earlier this week, the secretary-general of Mexico's lower house of Congress, Mauricio Farah, said that all 500 legislators would "only" be receiving a little under half a million pesos in Christmas bonuses after EL UNIVERSAL reported that legislators had been receiving secret, undisclosed bonuses that totaled 718,000 pesos over at least the last five years.