The former president of Uruguay, José Mujica, voted this Sunday in the internal elections that the South American country will hold and assured that he will die in battle because this is a way of life.

Shortly after polls opened at 8:00 a.m. local time (11:00 GMT), the former president cast his ballot at School No. 188, located minutes from his farm.

“We older people vote early,” said Mujica, who came to his constituency wearing a hat with the logo of the 609 list of the Popular Participation Movement, his sector of the leftist opposition coalition Front Amplio.

Likewise, the former president told the press that internal elections should be mandatory, just like the national elections that Uruguay will hold on the last Sunday in October.

For me they must be mandatory because if they force me to vote in the National Assembly, they will force me to vote for someone they did not force me to choose. This is a contradiction.

In addition, he said the Amplio Front could not do what it did in the 2014 internal elections, when it did not define its presidential formula immediately after the results came out.

In this regard, he explained that, in his opinion, it would be best for the second most voted candidate to accompany the winner in the above-mentioned formula.

Although his sector is promoting the candidacy of Yamanda Orsi, when asked about his active participation in the electoral campaign, Mujica replied that he did nothing compared to what he did in other elections.

“I haven’t done anything. Compared to what I’ve done, this is nothing. I’ve been fighting since I was 14 and I’ll die fighting. ‘It’s a way of life,'” he said.