The incumbent Vice-President of Suriname at 60!

Paul Rouget, Media365: published on Wednesday September 22, 2021 at 3:08 p.m.

Ronnie Brunswijk, the controversial vice-president of Suriname, was titular and captain for the round of 16 of the Concacaf League between his club Inter Moengotapoe and the Hondurans of Olimpia.

A funny scene took place Tuesday during the round of 16 first leg of the Concacaf League between the Surinamese club Inter Moengotapoe and the Hondurans of Olimpia. Owner of the Moengo club, Surinamese vice-president Ronnie Brunswijk was indeed titular and captain at the Frank Essed Stadion in Paramaribo, when he is 60 years and 198 days old! What would make it the oldest player in history to take part in an international club meeting. He will have played 54 minutes before being replaced. The score was then 3-0 for the visitors, who ultimately won 6-0. The second leg of the round of 16 of this competition, which is a kind of South American equivalent of the Europa League, will take place next Tuesday in the Honduran capital, and should be a formality. But Ronnie Brunswijk will not play.

Because this former bodyguard of the ex-Surinamese dictator Desi Bouterse had some problems with the justice system and will not take the risk of leaving the country, called Dutch Guyana until its independence in 1975. Sergeant in the army before to become a rebel leader, he was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison in 1999 by the Dutch courts for trafficking in cocaine and to ten years by the French courts. But Suriname does not expel its nationals. These convictions did not therefore prevent him from pursuing his career in politics, since he was elected deputy in 2005, and also from being talked about in the football world. After having built a stadium in his name, Ronnie Brunswijkstadion, for Inter Moengotapoe, he was initially suspended for threatening players with a firearm in 2005, a sanction finally lifted, before being sentenced. one-year suspension in 2012 for acts of violence against an arbitrator.