The Uruguayan President Jose Mujica has issued his official response to the ridiculously harsh/really quite lenient ban meted out to Luis Suarez. He had some forthright things to say about those chaps in FIFA.
Asked what his memory of the 2014 World Cup will be, he said ‘FIFA are a bunch of old sons of bitches.’ According to the Guardian, he then covered his mouth in feigned horror at his own boldness.
Asked by the journalist if he stood over these remarks, he said boldly ‘Publish it.’ He later described the ban dished out to Suarez as ‘fascist.’
Mujica leads some life for a Head of State. He gives away 90% of his salary to charity (the filthy populist!). Uruguay provides its leaders with a lavish residence, but Mujica has refused to take up the offer and instead lives on a fairly unprepossessing, slightly shambolic looking farmhouse outside Montevideo. He is also an atheist and a vegetarian. He took heat for showing up at a in sandals at the swearing in ceremony of his Finance minister.
During the 60s and 70s, with Uruguay under autocratic rule, he was part of the Tupamorus, a band of Che Guevara fancying Marxist Guerillas. In 1971, he was imprisoned and spent 14 years in prison, a fair chunk of which he whiled away in solitary confinement.
