It is no coincidence that the death of Pepe Mujica caused such great emotion worldwide.
Because, no matter how you look at it, he was a politician who was exceptional in many ways.
It was not just that he was an old guerrilla, from the Tupamaros movement, who spent many years in prison. We have seen, in various countries, people with a similar path, ending up the opposite of their youthful selves.
Nor was it simply that he was a successful president of Uruguay who managed to see his country in a better state at the end of his term than when he took office.
It was also the way in which he clearly renounced any notion of luxury and privilege. He kept for himself only a small part of the presidential compensation and donated 90% to social programs. He lived not in the presidential palace, but on the farm he owned with his wife. He drove an old Beetle.
How many active politicians can we think of who choose this path of simplicity and conscious poverty?
But we can think of several politicians who saw – and see – politics as a profitable activity.
Ignoring that basic principle that the right politician leaves politics poorer than he was before he entered.
And we do not say this by succumbing to easy populism. But because with the power of wealth, worldwide, increasing, the need for independence at every level of politics is becoming more and more urgent.
Because it is not only the risk of “political corruption”. It is the way in which a more comprehensive political and ideological transaction is “normalized”. Because politicians who believe that they should be rewarded for their contribution, who have no problem with the sponsorships, who often go through the “revolving doors” between politics and business, are politicians who sooner or later lose the sense of the “public interest” and identify it with market interest.
But the essence of politics is its ability to contribute to changing things. Only to do this it must be able to clash, it must be able to tame, when necessary, the market. Otherwise, social progress cannot exist.
Precisely for this reason we really need politicians who put this independence from wealth into practice and who choose a poverty that ultimately makes them understand much better the reality lived by most of the people whose destinies they determine. When someone’s lifestyle is really close to that of the people for whom you make decisions, they are more likely to be aware of their real problems, and therefore their real needs.
Not because poverty in itself is a guarantee of good decisions. But at least it guarantees fewer decisions dictated by those who have nothing in mind but the public interest. And it ensures ears open to society’s anguish.
