It’s a common grumble that politicians’ lifestyles are far
removed from those of their electorate. Not so in Uruguay. Meet the president –
who lives on a ramshackle farm and gives away most of his pay.
Laundry is strung outside the house.
The water comes from a well in a yard, overgrown with weeds. Only two police
officers and Manuela, a three-legged dog, keep watch outside.
This is the residence of the
president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, whose lifestyle clearly differs sharply from
that of most other world leaders.
President Mujica has shunned the
luxurious house that the Uruguayan state provides for its leaders and opted to
stay at his wife’s farmhouse, off a dirt road outside the capital, Montevideo.
The president and his wife work the
land themselves, growing flowers.
This austere lifestyle – and the fact
that Mujica donates about 90% of his monthly salary, equivalent to $12,000
(£7,500), to charity – has led him to be labelled the poorest president in the
world.
“I may appear to be an eccentric old
man … But this is a free choice.”
“I’ve lived like this most of my
life,” he says, sitting on an old chair in his garden, using a cushion favoured
by Manuela the dog.
“I can live well with what I have.”
His charitable donations – which
benefit poor people and small entrepreneurs – mean his salary is roughly in
line with the average Uruguayan income of $775 (£485) a month.
All the president’s wealth is a 1987
VW Beetle.
In 2010, his annual personal wealth
declaration – mandatory for officials in Uruguay – was $1,800 (£1,100), the
value of his 1987 Volkswagen Beetle.
This year, he added half of his
wife’s assets – land, tractors and a house – reaching $215,000 (£135,000).
That’s still only about two-thirds of
Vice-President Danilo Astori’s declared wealth, and a third of the figure
declared by Mujica’s predecessor as president, Tabare Vasquez.
Elected in 2009, Mujica spent the
1960s and 1970s as part of the Uruguayan guerrilla Tupamaros, a leftist armed
group inspired by the Cuban revolution.
He was shot six times and spent 14
years in jail. Most of his detention was spent in harsh conditions and
isolation, until he was freed in 1985 when Uruguay returned to democracy.
Those years in jail, Mujica says,
helped shape his outlook on life.
“I’m called ‘the poorest president’,
but I don’t feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an
expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more,” he says.
“This is a matter of freedom. If you
don’t have many possessions then you don’t need to work all your life like a
slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself,” he says.
“I may appear to be an eccentric old
man. But this is a free choice.”
The Uruguayan leader made a similar
point when he addressed the Rio+20 summit in June this year: “We’ve been
talking all afternoon about sustainable development. To get the masses out of
poverty.
“But 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 would have the same proportion of
cars per household than Germans? 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.”
Source: news.bbc.co.uk