At a glance, it looks like a PR stunt, but on closer inspection, one realises that the picture that has been doing the rounds on social media recently is, indeed, that of Uruguay’s President José Mujica.
Pepe, as his people fondly call him, is sitting on a hospital bench, waiting his turn to see the doctor. There are no mean-looking security men in sight; instead, he is surrounded by civilians, who like him, have come for treatment.
A BBC film in 2012 opens with Mujica inspecting the engine of an old tractor in his dimly lit garage, perhaps to see if it is up to the task.
Towards the end of the clip, he actually hops on and drives to the farm.
While presidents around the world use the vast resources at their disposal to bankroll lavish lifestyles for themselves and their families, this is the simple life this man has chosen, in spite of all the perks he is entitled to.
SHUNNED PRESIDENTIAL RESIDENCE
And it is one that stands in stark contrast to what we are used to. For while in Africa the title president is synonymous with acquisition, Mujica has almost nothing to his name.
In fact, even the country house he and his wife live in, about half an hour’s drive from the capital city, Montevideo, is hers.
Funnily, it has no fence; only the remote gate where two police officers stand guard. A dirt road from the gate ushers you into the simple compound .
The president and his wife, Senator Lucia Topolansky, work the land themselves. Since he was elected in November 2009, Mujica has shunned the official presidential residence.
And while many Africans, most of whom live in poverty, are familiar with the excesses of their presidents, Mujica gives almost 90per cent of his $12,500 (Sh1,087,500) monthly salary to the poor and small entrepreneurs, keeping only $1,250(Sh108,750), sometimes less, for himself, he told the Spanish newspaper, El Mundo, according to Univision.
This essentially brings him down to the average Uruguayan per capita income of about $10,000 a year, reports The World Post.
DECLARE WEALTH
“I do fine with that amount; I have to because there are many Uruguayans who live on much less,” Mujica told the paper.
In April this year, the Associated Press reported that the Uruguayan president declared $322,883 (Sh28,090,821) in wealth. This showed a 74 per cent increase in since 2012. He said that was because he had not been banking his money, about $104,000 (Sh,9048,000) until recently.
He valued their farm at about $108,000 (Sh9,396,000). He co-owns two other properties with his wife. And apart from his two 1987 VW Beetles worth about $4,750, (Sh413,259) Mujica has three tractors.
Uruguay’s 42,000 public officials have to declare their wealth every two years, but only the top two are required to make them public. His Vice-President, Daniel Astori, says he is worth $389,000 (Sh33,430,000).
However, Mujica resents being labelled the poorest president in the world. Asked by the BBC’s Vladimir Hernandez why he lives such a simple life he replied:
“Poor people are those who infinitely want more and more. Those who never have enough of anything and only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle. Those are the poor because they are in a never-ending cycle.
“If you don’t have many possessions, you don’t need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and, therefore, you have more time for yourself.”
DRIVES HIMSELF
“I don’t live in poverty, I live in simplicity. This is a matter of freedom. I need very little to live. I choose not to have too many belongings so I can choose to live how I want to live,” said Mujica, 79, with an amiable grandfatherly demeanor.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘austerity,’ because they prostituted it in Europe,” he said in reference to the controversial policies of drastically reducing government spending to confront some European countries’ fiscal crises.
And while many African presidents move around in the latest top-of-the range vehicles with a retinue of escort cars that terrorise other road users, Mujica has remained faithful to his 1987 VW Beetle. He drives himself wherever he goes and has no security men or chase cars.
As presidents elsewhere, and ironically those from Africa, which is known the poorest continent, continue to feature on the lists of the world’s richest people, stashing millions of dollars abroad, Mujica has focused on redistributing his nation’s wealth.
Indeed, he claims that his administration has reduced poverty from 37 to 11 per cent. His government’s redistributive policies include setting prices for essential commodities such as milk, and providing free computers and education to every child.
INCONSISTENT WITH DEMOCRACY
The man, who is often to be seen in woollen jerseys, has been photographed at official government meetings in sandals. He rarely wears suits or ties. In January this year, he said the suit had been imposed on the world by industrialisation, referring to it as dressing “like English gentlemen.”
He followed that up in May with anti-tie comments as part of wider criticism of the luxurious lifestyle lived by most leaders, which he views as inconsistent with democracy.
“The tie is a useless rag that constrains your neck,” Mujica said during an interview on a Spanish television show, Salvados, (saved), anchored by Jordi Évole.
“I’m an enemy of consumerism. Because of this hyper consumerism, we’re forgetting about fundamental things and wasting human strength on frivolities that have little to do with human happiness.”
He was responding to concerns that he had not worn a tie when he met US President Barack Obama in Washington a week earlier.
“The weird thing is how they live, not me and the majority of people – presidents enter office to live like a rich minority,” Mujica said.
“Here (in Uruguay) no one is above anyone else. Democracy aims to be government by the majority, and I live like the people in my country live, but there’s a powerful minority that lives very well.”
“There have been years when I would have been happy just to have a mattress,” said Mujica, recalling his time in prison, when he had to do without many things.
LIBERATING THE MASSES
A former leader of the leftist, armed Marxist Tupamaros guerrilla inspired by the Cuban revolution, to which his wife also belonged, he spent 14 years in prison under the military dictatorship in Uruguay, which held power from 1973 to 1985.
Most of his detention was spent in harsh conditions and solitary confinement at the bottom of a well, until he was freed in 1985 when Uruguay returned to democracy. The movement to which he belonged kidnapped the rich and robbed banks and gave the money to the poor.
“Locked up, I almost went mad,” he says of his political detention. “Now I’m a prisoner of my own freedom to think and decide as I wish. I cultivate that freedom and fight for it. I may make mistakes, some huge, but one of my few virtues is that I say what I think.”
The brutally honest president, who often speaks off the cuff, and has a well-documented portfolio of fearless criticisms against what in his opinion are excesses and waste by world leaders, 2012 lectured the Rio+20 summit, saying it was an illusion to speak of liberating the masses from poverty when there was so much needless consumption, especially in rich countries.
“We’ve been talking all afternoon about sustainable development to get the masses out of poverty. What are we thinking? Do we want the model of development and consumption of the rich countries? I ask you now what would happen to this planet if Indians had the same proportion of cars per household as Germans.
RECYCLE EVERYTHING
“How much oxygen would we have left? Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet,” he chided.
Mujica recently rejected a joint energy project with Brazil that would have provided his country with cheap coal energy because of his concern for the environment. He criticised the model of development advanced by affluent societies saying.
“We can almost recycle everything now. If we lived within our means — by being prudent — the 7 billion people in the world could have everything they needed. Global politics should be moving in that direction,” he said.
“Businesses just want to increase their profits; it’s up to the government to make sure they distribute enough of those profits so workers have the money to buy the goods they produce,” he told businessmen at the US Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s no mystery – the less poverty, the more commerce. The most important investment we can make is in human resources,” he lectured a roomful of businessmen at the US Chamber of Commerce about the benefits of redistributing wealth and raising workers’ salaries during the US visit.
LEGAL MARIJUANA
Mujica, who speaks his mind honestly and fearlessly about what he believes is right, explained his stance to the Brazilian weekly, Carta Capital “Even during summit meetings with world leaders, they tell me I’m right. But nothing happens. That’s why I keep repeating the same things. You have to persist and try to convince people.
“I have the aggressive courage to speak out. It’s not done in the modern world, where people conceal and disguise their feelings. Maybe that’s why I get people’s attention.”
His social agenda includes rather liberal laws such as legalisation of abortion up to the third month of pregnancy, gay marriages and the production and creation of the world’s first national marketplace for legal marijuana.
He also agreed to Obama’s request to take five prisoners from Guantánamo, but was categorical that they would be treated as refugees and, therefore, free to travel wherever they wish.
Mujica, who some in Europe have suggested should win the next Nobel Peace Prize has many faces. The US magazine, Foreign Policy, included him in its leading global thinkers of 2013.
Interestingly, while people from the lower and middle classes in Uruguay say he is someone they can identify with, there are others who don’t like the way he lives, much less this outspokenness.
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