REPORTER: David O'Shea
Wedged between two enormous and powerful neighbours, Uruguay has always struggled to get noticed. But now, their unique and charismatic president has put the country on the map, because, in a world of bland politicians, José Mujica stands out from the crowd. He lives a simple, austere life, still gets around in his old VW Beetle, shows zero interest in the trappings of high office and donates 90% of his salary to charity.
After getting the top job, there was no way he was going to move into the presidential palace. He is perfectly happy in the ramshackle one-bedroom farm house he has lived in with his wife for the past 30 years.
REPORTER (Translation): Good morning sir, it is a pleasure to meet you.
MAN (Translation): Let's go over there.
REPORTER (Translation): Hello. The famous three legged dog.
So, with the cameras set and the chooks pecking at my backside, we settle in for a chat. Mujica starts on a favourite topic - the environment, and the urgent need for global action.
JOSE MUJICA, PRESIDENT OF URUGUAY (Translation): We're sailing in a boat and as a species we are responsible for the boat's destination. No country can solve climate change alone, we have to take global measures. And I see the world's powerful leaders worrying themselves with who is going to win the next election. What are we missing? We are missing leadership. We are missing the decision to say "We are going to improve the entire planet"
At international conferences, President Mujica is known for asking provocative questions about the big issues of the modern age.
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): Are we ruling globalization or is globalization ruling us? Is it possible to speak of solidarity and everyone being together in an economy that is based on ruthless competition? How far does our fraternity go?
When he is not challenging us to question the model of development, Mujica does the usual stuff politicians do - like meeting ageing rock 'n' rollers. And at 79 years old himself, it taken a while to get used to some of the technology he now has at his fingertips.
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): Carolina, the truth is... that this is a strange moment for me. It's the first time I've had to talk through one of these machines. I'm from another era.
That would be the Cold War era. Mujica joined the Tupamaros a left-wing guerilla movement in the 1960s as revolutionary fervor swept Latin America following Fidel Castro's victory in Cuba.. Mujica robbed banks to source funds for the uprising.
REPORTER (Translation): Critics say someone who robbed banks and killed people doesn't deserve to be President. What do you say to them?
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): I never killed anyone because it wasn't necessary. I could have killed. The dangerous thing is that the banks rob from us. The way the banks behave is frankly unbearable. I didn't rob for me. I expropriated resources for a struggle. If I had robbed for myself that would be different.
ADOLFO GARCE, POLITICAL SCIENTIST: Sometimes I think that he escaped from a book! A very old book!
Political scientist, Adolfo Garcé, says while Mujica is a master communicator, he is not a great administrator.
ADOLFO GARCE: He all the time is talking, talking, talking, talking about problems, and maybe citizens need leaders solving problems, not talking about problems. And this is a problem for Mujica - a good man, a dreamer, a romantic and maybe a chaotic leader. Very sensitive to poor people, but citizens need more than good intentions. You know?
Mujica spent 13 years in prison, much of it in solitary, and for a long time trapped in a well.
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): Sometimes we were on the border of madness, but between madness and sanity, there is a shifting boundary. It is impossible to explain. Time slows down and you have to try to fill it. You don't have anything but solitude. So if there is a little bit of life, you watch it and study it. You watch the ants, and the cobwebs and even the rats that gather in the middle of the night. Insignificant things in the normal world - Right? But each one of these things is a universe.
REPORTER (Translation): Have you forgiven your captors, your torturers?
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): I haven't forgiven but I don't have any score to settle. I have to live because nobody can compensate us for what we have lost. You have to learn that this is a law of life. In life you can fall down 1000 times but the point is to have the willingness to stand up and to start again.
After we finish, the President's wife, Lucia Topolansky, invites me inside their home.
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY, JOSE'S WIFE (Translation): It's a bit of a mess because I'm constantly going over my books. I keep a handful of books permanently and the others I donate to public libraries. This is where the president works. And this is the President's bicycle. He may look fat now but he was skinny when he rode the bicycle.
REPORTER (Translation): We all change, right?
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY (Translation): Yes.
When she shows me their bedroom I can't help thinking that the walls could do with a lick of presidential paint.
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY (Translation): This is where we eat. If we ever need to entertain a lot of people we go to the neighbours' house where there is a barbeque.
REPORTER (Translation): Who does the housework?
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY (Translation): Well, I do some things and the President does some. For example, the President gets the food for our pet dog. Sometimes if we're having lunch and I have to leave in a hurry, he'll wash the dishes. So we share. Sometimes I'll also give him a hand on the farm.
As a young woman, she studied architecture and took a job at a bank to pay the university fees. She says she soon discovered the bank was conducting illegal currency deals.
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY (Translation): At the same time, I joined the National Liberation Movement and I suggested this to the comrades. We decided to go and take the accounting books and demonstrate what the problem was.
So she and her new guerilla friends went and robbed the bank, taking cash, as well as the incriminating paper work, which they then made public.
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY (Translation): In fact, the president of the bank who was the Agriculture Minister had to resign and there were a lot of problems. It shook up the Uruguayan financial market. They never forgave me. It was much more serious than killing someone.
Even so, I couldn't not ask her about the rumours that she was, in fact, a killer.
REPORTER (Translation): Will you ever confront the allegations that you are an assassin?
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY (Translation): Look, I was no assassin. I got out during the amnesty because I had not committed any violent crimes. What was the accusation? What was my great sin? To have revealed the private property of the bank - well if this is being a criminal, then maybe I'm a great criminal.
It has been an extraordinary journey into the democratic process since their release from prison, under the 1985 amnesty.
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY (Translation): I came out with the same convictions I went in with as well as the determination to keep fighting for my convictions
But first, she had to find the comrade she calls Pepe.
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY (Translation): I was with my family for a while, then I went to look for Pepe and from that moment on we've been together, Fighting together.
Topolansky, who turns 70 on Thursday, is a firebrand senator in the same party as her husband.
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): I José Alberto Mujica Cordano ...
When Mujica assumed the top job, Uruguayans witnessed the spectacle of his wife swearing him in and they began pushing through a program of reform, like legalising marijuana, with a plan for the government to grow, harvest and sell the weed.
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY (Translation): This was very controversial. Some accused us of encouraging its consumption, but it was quite the opposite. We are experimenting. We don't know if it's the best way. We think so. We can always go back if it doesn't work out because we're losing the battle against drug trafficking in Latin America.
In another controversial move, Mujica has agreed to help President Barack Obama settle some of the remaining prisoners in Guantanamo, Cuba - the men that no country wants.
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): I think it's Article 10 of the Refugee Law that obliges us to provide refuge and preserve their safety.
REPORTER (Translation): Why do you want to accept them?
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): First because I belong to a movement whose people were exiled all over the world and its very likely they considered us terrorists. Secondly, to do the right thing because that prison is an embarrassment! More than half the people have neither been charged nor tried. There's no prosecutor, no judge, nothing. It's kidnapping, from a formal legal perspective.
He brushes off concerns that accepting the four Syrians, one Palestinian and one Tunisian will bring problems in the future.
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): There is no problem - Uruguay is a country which has grown from immigration, people from all over. That is our origin. What's more, these people are broken, downtrodden, in a way.
Under Uruguay's constitution, Mujica cannot stand for a second term as president and with an election next month, the latest polls for his successor haven't been good.
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY (Translation): The only fight you lose is the one you abandon.
Senator Topolansky is calling on the faithful to stick with the party.
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY (Translation): Everyone onto the streets! Put flags on the houses, paint the walls, so that tomorrow we can reaffirm that there will be a nation for everyone.
Opposition candidate, 41-year-old Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou, is the polar opposite of Mujica. He is from one of the wealthiest families in the country - the son of a former President.
LUIS ALBERTO LACALLE POU: Obviously we are different ages and I know the president now is well seen because of his way of talking.
REPORTER: His man of the people style?
LUIS ALBERTO LACALLE POU: Yes, yes, and that is a good thing. But I prefer, without a lack of that, I prefer to be more formal in my relations.
But many Uruguayans have grown to like Mujica's informal style and Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou doesn't want to be out cooled by a man twice his age. He claims the idea to legalise marijuana was his.
LUIS ALBERTO LACALLE POU: Cultivation, not selling it in any other state or whatever, I don't believe in money and drugs being as a couple. I believe in people that just want to smoke a joint that they can cultivate their own plants.
REPORTER: Is there anything else you think Australians need to know about you as the potential next president of the country?
LUIS ALBERTO LACALLE POU: No, no, we'll be in touch! I will go to Bells Beach!
REPORTER: Bells Beach, what will you do in Bells Beach?
LUIS ALBERTO LACALLE POU: Surf, surf.
So when he passes on the baton in March next year, what will be Mujica's legacy? Lucia Topolansky says her husband has changed the perception of what a Uruguayan president should be like.
LUCIA TOPOLANSKY (Translation): A president who is accessible, simple, direct and who says what he thinks and I think that this mark that he's left on the presidency will be very difficult to undo because people have got used to this... You can knock on the door and be heard.
ADOLFO GARCE: We will remember Mujica as the poor president of Uruguay. The honest and authentic President of Uruguay. He helps people to be confident in politics and the world need more politicians like that even if they are a bit chaotic managing the country.
His political opponents are not as generous with their praise.
REPORTER: What do you think his legacy will be?
LUIS ALBERTO LACALLE POU: The answer is none.
REPORTER: That's very harsh.
LUIS ALBERTO LACALLE POU: Maybe. Maybe.
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): We've made a world that's all about marketing, about Twitter, short phrases, I like, I don't like. No, no, no. I'm a book person.
REPORTER (Translation): Do you use Twitter?
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): No, I don't.
REPORTER (Translation): Facebook?
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): Not that either. I have the mobile phone to communicate with.
Knowing, as we now do, that the US government is listening in on most of the world's communications, I can't resist asking him about it.
REPORTER (Translation): Would they learn much from listening in to your phone calls?
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): No, nothing. An extraordinary waste of time. An extraordinary waste of time.
REPORTER (Translation): Why? Don't you talk about serious things on the phone?
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): No, I talk about serious things, but nothing... but nothing... nothing you could call sinful. In any case, that could be debatable. At this stage, I don't have any sins because I've already committed them all. Now I'm in the countdown I'm on the path to old age and I'm starting on the path to holiness. Not because I'm good, but because of how much I sinned and because of this, how much I learned.
REPORTER (Translation): Many thanks Sir.
JOSE MUJICA (Translation): Thank you very much and greetings to Australia.
ANJALI RAO: Now, that is a serious power couple. David O'Shea filming and reporting there.
Reporter/Camera
DAVID O'SHEA
Fixer
ANNA MARIA MIZRAHI GARZOLO
PABLO MELGAR
Producer
NICK OLLE
Editor
DAVID POTTS
23rd September 2014