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Meet D Poorest President On Earth- Jose Mujica Of Uruguay Since 2010 - Foreign Affairs - Nairaland

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Uruguay Become The First Country To Legalise Marijuana / Uruguay: Meet Jose Mujica, The World's Poorest President. / Jose Mujica: The World’s ‘poorest’ President • Donates 90% Salary To Poor (2) (3) (4)

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Meet D Poorest President On Earth- Jose Mujica Of Uruguay Since 2010 by ffo(m): 12:33pm On Nov 15, 2012
He has no bank account, his only asset is a Volkswagen beetle, He donates 90% of his salary to charity. What a lesson to learn from dis man.


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'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.

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?

In contrast, his vice president Danilo Astori's declared wealth of £173,000 includes a house and car worth nearly 10 times Mr Mujica's Beetle.

The leftist leader, who shuns formal suits and ties, was jailed for more than a decade for his guerrilla activities during the 1960s and 1970s.


You can get more info about this man on:

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243493

Re: Meet D Poorest President On Earth- Jose Mujica Of Uruguay Since 2010 by padmoreete2(m): 12:43pm On Nov 15, 2012
Lol
Re: Meet D Poorest President On Earth- Jose Mujica Of Uruguay Since 2010 by ffo(m): 1:24pm On Nov 15, 2012
padmore.ete2:
Lol

Bros! is it funny?
Re: Meet D Poorest President On Earth- Jose Mujica Of Uruguay Since 2010 by 7lives: 1:34pm On Nov 15, 2012
He is a true leader, may the lord bless him.
Re: Meet D Poorest President On Earth- Jose Mujica Of Uruguay Since 2010 by edoyad(m): 2:21pm On Nov 15, 2012
O P thank you for finding me a Role Model, Jose Mujica.

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Re: Meet D Poorest President On Earth- Jose Mujica Of Uruguay Since 2010 by padmoreete2(m): 8:47pm On Nov 15, 2012
ffo:

Bros! is it funny?
mehn! Its quite awkward and rear. Never seen someone of such behavioural magnitude and to me its just more than the ordinary.I think he really can help it.He's encaged with phenomenom he can't publicly declare wide to open world. Thanks

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Re: Meet D Poorest President On Earth- Jose Mujica Of Uruguay Since 2010 by dokunbam(m): 10:18am On Apr 15, 2015
shocked
Re: Meet D Poorest President On Earth- Jose Mujica Of Uruguay Since 2010 by Nobody: 7:35am On May 02, 2015
storing up for eternity, that is the best place to save; were no thiefs and Burglers could ever reach. may God reward him with everlasting Life IN JESUS NAME .AMEN.

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