This Wednesday the dialogue launched by the Ibero-American group of progressive leaders was set in motion. In the first session, former Chilean presidential candidate Marco Enríquez-Ominami and Brazilian lawyer Carol Proner were also present.
This Wednesday, former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, addressed -for the first time- the accusations against him about possible electoral fraud and the subsequent studies by prominent investigators that refute weak conclusions presented by the OAS.
The statements of the former president pointed to the debut of the cycle “Dialogues for Change with the Puebla Group”, an instance that managed to reach more than 400.000 people through Facebook Live, where the dialogues were broadcasted.
Brazilian jurist and Coordinator of the Latin American Council of Justice and Democracy (CLAJUD), Carol Proner; and founder of Grupo de Puebla and the leader of Chilean progressivism, Marco Enríquez-Ominami were also in the session.
During the presentation, Evo Morales was emphatic in assuring that “the worst pandemic that Bolivia has is called Jeanine Añez. From January until now, there is no one hospital built. The works in Trinidad are on hold. In Sucre and Potosí, they are on hold as well”.
Also, he added, “yesterday, doctors on hunger strike, marched asking for biosecurity measures. They are not opposition doctors or members of MAS; they are from the Añez government, marching for biosecurity. (…) Only a democratically elected government, with legitimacy, strong, with authority, will chase away the economic and health crisis ”.
Former Chilean candidate and progressive leader, Marco Enríquez-Ominami, paid tribute to the Latin American leaders who have collaborated with the defense of Evo Morales, “I want to recognize different leaders that were available to help the night of the coup in Bolivia, President Alberto Fernández, Celso Amorim, Dilma Rousseff, Martín Torrijos, Aloizio Mercadante, Ernesto Samper, and Carol Proner, to name a few. They were trying to help to defend not just Evo Morales but the values of democracy”.
At the same time, he urged a Latin American unity, remembering that “that night what happened was a coup d’etat to a president, and in Chile, we had a coup that traumatized us a lot”.
“I want to urge my Chilean brothers to remember that Chile and Bolivia are similar, we are brother countries. I was very hurt by the silence of Chile that night; the President of Chile did not condemn the coup. Only the unity of the progressives will give us hope”, pointed out the former presidential candidate.
Currently, the international collective has nine former presidents among its members, including former presidents of Spain, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Uruguay. It is expected that most of the members of the Puebla Group will take part in the dialogues.