Amazing: a good political story. But then it's about an amazing character

You might not have spotted a significant political moment yesterday.

A man with enough humility to make anyone proud, José “Pepe” Mujica was certainly the world’s humblest politician. Yesterday he passed on the presidency of Uruguay to his elected successor Tabaré Vázquez who, as it happens, was also his predecessor. Vázquez has an excellent track record: he and Mujica between them have made their country the most successful in the region.

But it’s Pepe who’s extraordinary. This is a time when, in Britain, two of our most senior politicians, both former Foreign Secretaries, one from each of the two main parties, fell into a ridiculous trap: journalists posing as representatives of a fictitious Chinese company persuaded them to offer to work on its behalf for sky-high fees (one suggested £5000 a day), with no concern as to whether their duties as members of Parliament would allow them to take on such a commitment (one suggested that he was free 95% of his time).

Pepe Mujica at work

By way of contrast to this cupidity, Pepe gave up 90% of his salary as President, asking for it to be paid to a range of charities supporting poor people and small businesses. He and his wife, a Uruguayan Senator, refused to move in to the Presidential palace, but stayed in their modest farm on the edge of the capital, Montevideo, where they make a little money growing chrysanthemums, and live with their three-legged dog.

What makes this still more remarkable is that Pepe wasn’t always so peaceful. In the mid-sixties he joined the Tupamaros guerrilla organisation, a movement we would no doubt regard as terrorist today. In 1970, he was involved in a gun battle which left two policemen injured and himself riddled with six bullets. His life was only saved by a highly competent surgeon who put dedication to his professional duties above any political views he may have held.

Despite three escapes, each leading to recapture, Mujica spent thirteen years in gaol, two of them at the bottom of an old horse trough. The experience wrecked his health, mentally as well as physically.

As President, not only did he build on the economic success of Vázquez, he also legalised gay marriage and oversaw the legalisation of abortion. He even introduced a government-backed cannabis market. I saw him interviewed, and it’s clear he regards cannabis as an abomination. But there are so many users and it makes no sense to leave them as prey to criminal drug dealers. Legalising the trade makes it controllable.

There are so many morals to this story it’s hard to know where to begin.

Perhaps the first is to do with rehabilitation. In Europe or the United States, Mujica would have been in gaol for the rest of his life, or possibly executed. But Uruguay amnestied the Tupamaros after the restoration of democracy, so it was able to enjoy this extraordinary man’s enlightened presidency.

As the cannabis story showed, he can recognise that there are others who see things differently from him, and they deserve protection too. The mere fact that he disapproves of the drug they consume doesn’t mean the government has to suppress it, or oppress them. He’s right to point out that it’s not disapproval that matters but control, and that’s a lot easier within the framework of law.

Finally, he showed that success doesn’t have to mean ostentation and the flaunting of wealth. His trademark was the 1987 blue Volkswagen Beetle he insisted on driving instead of an official car. He served his people, and did it for a modest income.

Great picture from the Independent
Such a common scene: security agents by a Presidential car –
but with a beat-up blue Beetle instead of the black Cadillac?

Practically all the things he did would spell electoral disaster in most of the apparently advanced democracies. Why, he even showed up for the investiture of his successor in his usual black suit, with no tie, and wearing brown rubber-soled shoes.

And here’s the question. Who’s got it right? The people of our wealthier nations or those of Uruguay?

Here’s a clue to the answer. Today’s Independent quotes Charo Baroni, a 66-year-old housewife, saying “he’s the best president we’ve ever had.”

How many ordinary electors of our nations would speak so warmly of their leaders?

Thanks for everything dear old man
How many of our politicians get that kind of a send off?

If the people don't, who'll defend rights against government abuse?

A pincer movement is a much more effective form of attack than a simple frontal assault.

That no doubt is the reason we’re facing a two-pronged movement against civil rights in Britain at the moment.

One prong is being run by the government and takes the form of legal moves to introduce secret trials, held in private and with the defence denied access to the prosecution evidence.

The other prong is still more insidious in that it is based on whipping up a popular movement. Spearheaded by the right wing of the Conservative Party and its sniping opponents even further to the right in UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party), it takes the form of a campaign against the Human Rights Act. A measure of its relative success is that it has managed to make ‘human rights’ sound like a bad thing – an extraordinary piece of doublespeak, fully worthy of Orwell’s 1984.

The pressure for closed trials is ostensibly based on the need to keep certain types of evidence hidden from certain types of defendant, mainly evidence obtained by the intelligence services, used against presumed terrorists. Just how serious the issue is was made clear by the former Labour Cabinet Minister Jack Straw. In a debate on the bill on 4 March, he told the House of Commons that in certain circumstances certain types of information have to remain concealed, in order to protect secret sources. If secrecy could not be guaranteed, the evidence could not be used and a terrorist might walk free and offend again. Straw went on:

‘If we had explained how we had ended up in such a situation by saying that information had to be provided in its entirety in open court in all circumstances, people would have said, “Thanks very much, but my relative, wife or child has just died.” That is the dilemma and it is not abstract—it is absolutely real.’

That immediately reminds me of Benjamin Franklin: ‘those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ Britain at its best decided to put certain freedoms above protecting life – if not, it would not have fought on against Nazi Germany in June 1940, at a time when many even in government favoured surrender, in a war that in the end cost nearly half a million British lives.

Jack Straw
Once a radical, now keen on secret trials

That however isn’t the most shameful aspect of Straw’s statement. The truth, as Henry Porter pointed out in the Observer this weekend, is that the effect of revealing evidence in open court in terrorist cases has not been to free terrorists, but to embarrass the government and force it to pay damages for having behaved illegally. No wonder government wants to conceal this kind of information. 

Porter reminds us that Straw told parliament in 2005 that Britain had not been involved in rendition and torture of terror suspects; in 2009, his successor David Miliband had to admit that the statement was untrue and apologise for it. 

That’s what secret courts are about: not so much to protect us from terrorists but to protect government from embarrassing disclosures of its own bungling or criminal acts.

Which brings me to second prong of the attack, against the Human Rights Act. The popular movement against it points to the criminals who hide behind its provisions, and many do – but then criminals have always been good at abusing rights. That doesn’t mean we should do without them.

Article 6 of the Act guarantees that ‘everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law’ (my emphasis). Later, it specifies that a person accused of a crime is entitled ‘to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of the accusation against him’ and equally ‘to examine or have examined witnesses against him’

The US constitution is remarkable for its conciseness, its ability to express fundamental rights much more succinctly than most such legislation. Coincidentally, as it is Article 6 of the Human Rights Act, it is the Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution that deals with the right to a fair a trial:

‘In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

The fact that the same rights are guaranteed on both sides of the Atlantic does rather suggest that they’re regarded as fundamental generally in democratic societies.

So why do so many citizens in Britain oppose the Human Rights Act? Especially when the government is busily trying to bring in legislation that undermines one of its most significant articles. Have some of my compatriots suddenly decided that they don’t need protection from government misdeeds and that the two-pronged attack therefore deserves to succeed?

Odd. They don’t usually show such touching confidence in the good faith of their rulers.