"No, I'm not poor.  Poor are those who always want more... because they're in an endless race". That was Jose Mujica, Uruguay's former socialist president who passed away on 13 May 2025, vehemently rejecting his nickname of "the world's poorest president".  He died in the same ramshackle farmhouse he'd always lived in, even while President between 2010 and 2015.

Mujica had a deep and genuine hatred of pomp and ostentatious luxury which he saw as inconsistent with the egalitarian principles of a democratic republic. Mujica, the true socialist, would have been disgusted with Labour's latest young leaders - Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela - obsessed with money, wealth, possessions and the trappings of power - the blue-light police outriders, the diplomatic passport, the exclusive black Maserati SUV, the luxury yacht, the hundreds of thousands in consultancies, the sprawling properties.

Jose Mujica refused to move in to the Presidential palace, a three-storey residence with chandeliers, marble floors and Louis XV furniture.  "They should make it a high school," he commented. He remained in his modest three-roomed farm crammed with overstuffed bookcases and pickled vegetables. He often showed up to work in his Vespa or later his 1987 light blue Volkswagen Beetle.

One former Maltese Prime Minister, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnnici, also travelled around in his Volkswagen Beetle. He too hated attention, detested worldly luxuries and despite his position retained an endearing humility.   Labour's current leader and his predecessor couldn't be more different. KMB wasn't blinded by money. He surely wasn't impressed by business moguls. He didn't party with shady millionaires and never accepted their lavish gifts.  When did Labour lose its soul?

Mujica often dressed in a tracksuit and fleece. You wouldn't catch him flashing designer gear, posing on Instagram with his attention-seeking wife and her designer bags worth more than the average worker's annual income.  Mujica's wife was a guerilla fighter who relished her austere lifestyle, growing chrysanthemums on their farm.

Mujica refused to get a presidential jet, instead using the money to buy a helicopter with surgical facilities to rescue accident victims.  "It's so easy," he said. "There's no dilemma - a presidential jet or a rescue chopper?....I'm not advising we go back to the caves .... What I recommend is to stop wasting resources on useless things. We can live much more modestly. We can spend our resources on things far more important for everyone".

What would Mujica say if he knew Abela spent €225,000 of taxpayers' money on the opening party of MICAS? Or if he knew Abela spent €3.8 million on the Mediterranean film festival while cancer patients beg the Community Chest Fund for life-saving treatment?  Mujica died from oesophageal cancer.  Mujica would be raging if he knew Labour diverted €400 million euro of health funding into a company with secret ultimate beneficial owners and that millions of it went to Accutor AG which paid Joseph Muscat tens of thousands of euro.  He'd be apopleptic if he knew millions more were spent on luxury apartments, luxury cars, and on creating sleazy stories with which to destroy Abela's rival, Chris Fearne.

Mujica gave away over 90% of his presidential salary to charity.  At the end of his presidency, with popularity ratings above 70%, he was easily elected Senator.  On resigning he refused his pension.  Compare that to Joseph Muscat, forced out in disgrace before completing a single term, who coerced his successor to give him an undeserved €120,000 lump sum, a second official car for his wife and government-funded offices in Sa Maison from which to continue making hundreds of thousands of euro in "consultancies" given to him by business moguls who benefitted handsomely from his shady Prime Ministerial decisions.

Mujica's frugal authenticity turned him into a global icon especially for those uncomfortable with a voracious environmentally predatory consumerism. In contrast Malta's champagne socialists ravage our environment and destroy our historical monuments to appease greedy developers with whom they are suspiciously intimate. Abela dined with notorious mega-developer Joseph Portelli on the eve of a general election despite Portelli's long record of abuse and illegalities. Years after promising to stop developments during appeals, Abela failed to keep his promise.

Mujica was shot six times, tortured and imprisoned for 14 years. "Human nature is such that you learn more from suffering than from a life of ease," he commented.  Maybe that's why Abela and Muscat have learnt nothing. Muscat, the pampered single child, had everything he wanted.  Abela never had to struggle for anything, simply moving into his father's practice the minute he completed his studies, making hundreds of thousands from government contracts.

Mujica would have been revulsed to know that despite his €17,000 monthly remuneration from the Planning Authority, Abela still demanded tens of thousands more in overtime.  He would have been appalled at the wealthy young lawyer's €45,000 dodgy deal with Chris Borg, a young man who would struggle to explain the provenance of his enormous wealth, now charged with kidnapping and money laundering.

Mujica would have squirmed in shame if he knew Abela acquired a sprawling Zejtun property, riddled with illegalities, days after those illegalities were sanctioned by the authority he worked for and paid peanuts for it. Abela acquired a farmhouse in Xewkija and then paid hundreds of thousands of euro for two huge tracts of land but cynically concealed them claiming they were the same Xewkija property. 

Mujica had no problems publishing his declaration of assets which in 2010 amounted to 1,800 dollars, the value of his 1987 Volkswagen Beetle.  In 2012 he declared his wife's assets too - her farm and tractors - amounting to 215,000 dollars.  But Abela doggedly refuses to publish his, let alone his wife's, asset declaration. He knows he cannot explain spending hundreds of thousands of euro on land, tens of thousands running his luxury yacht and still fattening his massive bank accounts despite earning just €68,000 per year. 

During Mujica's tenure poverty and inequality were reduced.  During Muscat's and Abela's years in power  the gap between rich and poor has grown ever wider. In December 2012 Malta's GINI coefficient, a measure of inequality reached its lowest at 27.1%.  In December 2023, after a decade of Labour, it reached a record high of 33%.  Mujica would be mortified.

Mujica was never accused of corruption or of undermining his country's democracy.  When Uruguay's courts knocked down six of his government's laws he accepted the decision without criticism. Compare that with Abela's vitriolic assault on the judiciary, his harassment of individual magistrates accusing one of political terrorism. Now he will be appointing a Standards Commissioner to "oversee" the judiciary.  That's not democracy, Mujica would argue, that's an obsession to dominate.

Mujica wasn't revered just for his austerity.  Despite being tortured, shot, and imprisoned for 14 years he remained gracious - "I don't hate," he said.  "Can you imagine the luxury it is not to hate?" He took the opportunity to apologise to "any colleagues I may have personally hurt in the heat of the debate". Compare that to Abela who cruelly attacked the grieving family of a murdered journalist. He runs a media machine whose sole purpose is harassing and intimidating critics.

Robert Abela should heed Mujica's warning "the more you have, the less happy you are". He should learn from the Uruguayan who commented: "Now I am the President but tomorrow like everybody else I"ll just be a pile of worms".