Evo Morales again attacked Eva Copa, who replied: “Traitor is he who flees and leaves his people abandoned and defenseless”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL –  Evo Morales is watching how the internal power in the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) is slipping away from him and he is obsessed with Eva Copa. The elected mayor of El Alto is one of the many leaders who have clashed with the former Bolivian leader.

In this case, the dispute arose due to an attack made by the ex-president against the politician whose popularity is growing all across the country. According to Morales, Copa had met secretly with an opposition leader from Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

“On the afternoon of April 15th, in a hotel in Tarija, Luis Fernando Camacho, Damián Condori, Eva Copa, Óscar Montes and others have met. The traitors met with Camacho. I want the Bolivian people to know this, especially the social movements,” Morales said in his program “Evo es pueblo.”

However, Copa’s reaction was not long in coming and, in addition to “liar”, El Alto’s political leader reminded him of his resignation and flight from Bolivia in the convulsive days in late 2019. “Mr. Evo Morales, do not lie to the Bolivian people, neither will you want to cover the defeat of your party by launching insults and falsehoods,” she snapped back.

“If you claim that I met with Mr. Camacho, please provide evidence and show where and at what time I held that meeting. With the courage of a woman, I challenge you to corroborate your assertions, otherwise you will become a lying politician. And if we are talking about traitors, traitors are those who flee and leave their people abandoned and defenseless,” added the elected mayor in a Facebook message, who left the MAS after Morales’ arbitrary actions and his return to Bolivia.

This is not the first time that Morales calls Copa a traitor and that she reminds him of his flight from the country and how he sought refuge in foreign embassies, while the MAS rank and file and other leaders were left helpless.

Who is Eva Copa

Until 2019 Eva Copa was a low profile MAS senator and virtually unknown in the country. It was after Evo Morales’ departure and with the start of the transitional government of ex-president Jeanine Añez that she became more public and relevant, being elected president of the Senate when the most prominent MAS leaders stepped down from their main public posts, went into exile or left the country.

In that critical stage of Bolivia’s political life, 15 months ago, Eva Copa was sworn in as president of the Senate and her role was key to agree on the call for new presidential elections with the transitional government and the momentary pacification of the country, which was in turmoil due to Evo Morales’ resignation before the end of his term, following a 21-day protest due to allegations of electoral fraud.

The MAS senator then came into the picture and, along with the Executive and Legislative Branches, was involved in the transition, the call for new elections, the acceptance of Morales’ resignation and the country’s pacification.

During this period, convulsed by a deep political crisis, Eva Copa also became a factor of opposition and resistance to the transitional government of Jeanine Añez, when an extension of the provisional mandate became a possibility due to the postponement of the elections caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In line with Morales and MAS, Copa also blocked credits obtained by the Añez government from the Senate, such as one from the IMF.

Copa then complained about the lack of coordination of powers due to arbitrary attitudes of the president and her collaborators, and denounced judicial political persecution. The senator also supported the campaign of current president Luis Arce and since she became visible as leader of the MAS renovation, she began to shape up as a potential candidate of the party for mayor of El Alto, the city where she lives and which she represented in the Senate.

With the return of MAS to power and the inauguration of Luis Arce’s mandate, Copa entered the pre-electoral race, together with dozens of her party’s other pre-candidates for the mayor’s office in El Alto.

Despite being the party’s pre-candidate with the greatest popular support in El Alto, she was not chosen to run for mayor of El Alto for the MAS. With the support of Evo Morales, the chosen candidate was union leader and Aymara peasant Zacarías Maquera.

This decision was the factor of discord that produced the rupture of Copa with Morales and the MAS leadership, so she decided to leave the party and accept Jallalla’s invitation, which had the late Aymara leader Felipe Quispe as candidate for the governorship, one of the people who always contested the support of the popular indigenous nationalism in Bolivia with Evo Morales.

Source: Infobae