(Newswire.net — November 8, 2014) — Uruguay’s president, José Alberto “Pepe” Mujica Cordano, became famous for his unconventional presidency. When he visits the doctor to check his health, he sits in the waiting room of the public hospital, waiting for his turn. When he goes to work, he rides in his 1987 VW Beetle for which he got a $1million offer from an Arab sheikh.
“Human beings have a bit of fetishism; we need certain material symbols,” said Mr. Mujica, adding that he still keeps his father’s old hammer and shovel: “They [material symbols] are little things to the world, but are worth a lot to you.” he said.
Mexico’s ambassador to Uruguay told BBC News it was he who suggested that Mujica sell off the car. According to an anonymous source within the embassy, the ambassador and President Mujica joked that they could buy ten 4WD trucks for the money. Mr. Mujica, however, could not care less.
“I didn’t give it any importance,” the humble ex-guerilla leader told a news conference, after the Uruguayan weekly Busqueda broke the story. He has “no commitment to cars”, however, if he really sells his Beatle for a $1 million, Mujica plans to donate the entire proceedings to a housing support program for the homeless. If he gets trucks, he will donate them to the country’s public health office, or to his campaign workers, he said.
President of Uruguay, Mr. Mujica, lives on a run-down farm, which is under his wife’s name. The only possession that he owns on his name is a bluish 1987 VW Beetle, so it is not easy to let it go.
Officially, President Mujica earns a $11,000 a month, however, 20 percent he gives to his political movement and more than 50 percent he donates to charities supporting the poor.
The former Tupamaros (National Liberation Movement) leader, inspired by the Cuban revolution, Mr. Mujica changed the social climate Uruguay in 2012, when his government made a move to legalize state-controlled sales of marijuana. Mujica explained that Uruguay’s estimated $40 million-a-year marijuana business is better to be controlled by the state than by the cartels.
As considered one of the world’s most down-to-earth leaders Mr. Mujica emphasizes the need for people to rather focus on love than on material possessions.
“A president is a high-level official who is elected to carry out a function. He is not a king, not a god. He is not the witch doctor of a tribe who knows everything. He is a civil servant,” Mujica once told Al Jazeera, adding that he believes the ideal way of living is “to live like the vast majority of people whom we [the government] attempt to serve and represent.”