Mexican soccer legend and upstart politician Cuauhtémoc Blanco has suspended a hunger strike after two days following the country’s Supreme Court's decision to temporarily halt an impeachment process to remove him as mayor of Cuernavaca.
Morelos' state congress recently voted to impeach Blanco, claiming the polemic former soccer captain is unfit to be mayor and that he falsified his residency documents. He’s also accused of having copy-pasted his resume from Wikipedia to register his candidacy for mayor, which he won in the July 2015 elections.
Last year the minority Social Democratic Party (PSD) gave Blanco a political platform to turn his sports celebrity and name recognition into votes. Mexican media later reported that Blanco was a political mercenary who agreed to run as the PSD candidate in exchange for approximately $350,000, regardless of whether he won or lost.
“I fucked them over!,” Blanco said mocking the other political parties as he watched the election results come in at his own rally.
Right after winning the mayor's seat, Blanco, a notorious brawler during his soccer days, left Mexico on an extended honeymoon with his new wife and failed to show up for some of his first appointments as mayor-elect.
Mayor Blanco who took office in Dec. 2015 says the governor of Morelos is now trying to get rid of him for not supporting certain statewide initatives.
“They are persecuting me because I have denounced acts of corruption and the abuse of authorities in Morelos,” Blanco wrote on Facebook, when he announced his hunger strike in front of Cuernavaca's cathedral on Saturday. “But I’m not going to give up. They are not going to win by cheating. I will defend my human and political rights.”
It’s unclear if Blanco, looking pudgy as usual, actually stuck to the hunger strike for two days. The stunt seems to have worked for now but a guy like Cuau is due for more scandals.