The judges of the Higher Electoral Tribunal (TSE), appointed by the National Council of Magistrates in December 2011, are governed by Law 29-11, which says, on the subject of the salaries of the presiding judge and the titular judges, that they will receive permanent salaries equal to those of the members of the Central Electoral Board (JCE). Nevertheless, in its website www.tse.gob.do in the section on Transparency, you can read that the salary of the TSE presiding magistrate amounts to RD$400,000 and that of the members RD$360,000 (net RD$275,976.66). Despite the fact that the JCE website does not have the up-to-date salaries and only talks about what was received as of September 2012 with the “election bonus”, the head of the JCE received RD$300,000 and the members RD$250,382.60 (net RD$187,464.79). (The “electoral bonus” was an administrative decision by the JCE, which is not tied to the real salary, and it is applied in election years on the assumption that the members will be working full time on the organization of the elections. Sources at the JCE told Diario Libre in confidence that this has always been the practice, which is to say that this bonus has been applied during every election year.
This salary differential would entail a clear violation of Article 8 of Law 29-11 of 20 January 2011, the Organic Law of the TSE which says, “Performance of duties: The President and the members of the Superior Electoral Tribunal will enjoy permanent salaries equal to those of the members of the Central Electoral Board, which will be assigned in the General State Budget.” From reading this article it follows that the judges of the TSE are in violation of their own organic law if the salary amounts that appear on their webpage are real, and consequently they would be incurring in an illegality from the moment of their appointments, as they themselves approved salaries above those received by the members of the JCE. A simple arithmetic exercise shows that the president of the TSE has illegally received approximately 1,400,000, and the titular judges RD$1,540,000 each for 14 months.