QUEBEC - After years of pressure, Quebec Premier Jean Charest has agreed to renounce his $75,000 annual bonus salary.

That salary has been paid to him by the Quebec Liberal Party since he entered provincial politics in 1998.

Charest now says he's willing to drop it in order to get the opposition to endorse his government's ethics legislation.

The opposition has long complained about the shadowy stipend -- which only became publicly disclosed after it was rumoured for years to exist.

Charest's opponents clamoured for more information about how the party raised the money, and where it came from.

They said it placed him in a potential conflict, squeezing him between the interests of the state and the interests of Liberal party donors.