Mockus: Lithuanians work too much

VILNIUS - On June 28, on the eve of the meeting of the Community of Democracies attracting crowds of politicians from all continents to Vilnius, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Azubalis met in his office with a superstar politician who came to Lithuania to participate in another forum: Antanas Mockus, who came second in last year’s presidential elections in Colombia, arrived to Lithuania to participate in the 15th World Lithuanian Symposium on Arts and Sciences in Kaunas and Vilnius on July 3-5.

This symposium of Lithuanians from all over the world received high-level support – even Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, arrived at it. Mockus, the Colombia-born (in 1952) Lithuanian-origin eccentric mathematician and philosopher, former rector of the National University of Colombia, and two-term extremely successful mayor of Bogota, is known world-wide and is almost as famous as the two other celebrities of Colombia, pop singer Shakira and Nobel Prize-winner novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Mockus is always full of innovative ideas, especially on the reorganization of big city management - he is invited to many forums all over the world.

After finishing talking with Azubalis about the integration of the intellectual powers of the Lithuanian diaspora and Lithuania (that could be done mostly via Internet), Mockus spoke with journalists. His full name is Aurelijus Rutenis Antanas Mockus Sivickas (son of post-WWII Lithuanian emigres Nijole and Alfonsas) and he speaks good Lithuanian, although some slight Latin accent is noticeable. Asked if he will run for the presidency again (he participated in the Colombian presidential elections in 2006 and 2010), Mockus, presidential candidate of the Colombian Green Party back in 2010, stated, “I don’t think that I’ll run for it in Lithuania, but some people of Colombia are very supportive and they want me to be their candidate.”

Mockus also compared Lithuania and his native Colombia. “Nationalism in Colombia is four times stronger than in Lithuania,” he said. Mockus also stated that 90 percent of Colombians believe that more than half of all their bureaucrats are corrupt. More than half of Colombians believe that their other compatriots are dishonest, while Lithuanians have more trust in their compatriots, according to Mockus. 

He also shared with journalists his social observations on the Lithuanian national character and compared it with social preferences of other nations. In Lithuania, as well as in Japan, the failure to get a university education is understood as a social stigma, while people in the West are less obsessed with university diplomas, according to Mockus, who himself is a big promoter of education. Mockus said that Lithuanians are very similar to the Japanese because both nations share the same cult of work and education, while Westerners are free from such workaholism (Mockus himself studied in France and knows that country well), and they think about friends and leisure time much more than Lithuanians. “My dream is that Lithuanians would think not only about their job, but also about family, religion and leisure time,” Mockus said. He could illustrate his statements with a quote from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who once said, “Nobody ever says on their death-bed: I wish I had spent more time at work.”

Mockus said that the Lithuanian perfectionism at work is one of the reasons for Lithuania’s lead in the world statistics on suicides (the suicide rate for men in Lithuania is the highest in the world, while Lithuanian women choose suicide much more rarely and occupy 11-12th place in the world). “I fight for life. I fight against homicides in Colombia and suicides in Lithuania,” Mockus said at the symposium.