Meet Jose Mujica, 'World's Poorest President
Friday, November 16, 2012Omoba
.While leaders of other
poor countries live in mansions and MPs take up residence in plush hotel
suites, Jose Mujica, President of Uruguay, lives on an old farmhouse, having
shunned the luxury of the presidential palace in the capital city of
Montevideo.
The 77-year-old
vegetarian president lives on his wife's half-dilapidated farmhouse where he
fetches water from a well in a yard overgrown with weeds and hangs out his
clothes on a line to dry in the open.
While presidents of
even some of the poorest countries in the world ride in mile-long bullet proof
limousines with hordes of security operatives and elite military guardsmen
armed to the teeth swarming around them, Mujica drives a 1987 VW Beetle and his
official retinue of guards consist of a mongrel missing one leg and two police
officers.
The BBC reports that
Mujica not only lives austerely in spite of the fact that he is a president, he
donates 90 percent of his monthly salary of $12,000 to charity. Donating so
much of his salary to poor and small entrepreneurs means that he receives a
paltry $775 a month, comparable to the income of the average Uruguayan.
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