Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba clashed with the Liberal Party leadership, claiming her party wants to remove her from the Senate’s peace commission.
The senator on Tuesday said she is being ignored by her party, and demanded respect for the wide support she claims to have received in the last elections.
Cordoba responded to press releases by her party, in which the Liberals distance themselves from remarks made by Cordoba in Europe. The senator, on a recent trip to Europe, called on the E.U. to pressure President Juan Manuel Santos to enter peace talks with the FARC and called Colombia “the biggest mass grave of Latin America.”
Her party, a member of President Santos’ governing coalition, distanced themselves from the senator’s remarks immediately and Cordoba later apologized to Santos for what she had said.
However, the senator feels mistreated by her own party.
“You can not disrespect me the way they have disrespected me. I reject the press releases that above all are based on disinformation. This [Liberal Party] is not a movement that defends the interests of the Colombian people. This is a party that fails to respect opposition and the different critics,” Cordoba said in the Senate.
Liberal Party leader Rafael Pardo tried to calm the situation with the dissident senator at a meeting in the city of Pereira where he said that “the staments made by Piedad Cordoba abroad were unfortunate, as we said, and we will not start a controversy with the Liberal senator.”