Councilor Elsa Betancort has resigned from Podemos, although she will keep her councilor's seat until the end of the legislature in 2023.
Betancort has already formally submitted her resignation to the party, and says she is waiting to meet with the secretary of the Teguise Town Hall to see what her situation would be. “I ran as an independent, so I don't think Podemos has any right to request the seat,” she says. In addition, if she were to continue her political career with any of the parties that made up the electoral coalition, Elsa Betancort maintains that it would be with the Equo party, with which she claims to have “always worked in agreement.”
“It is a decision that has been thought about and studied for quite some time,” the councilor acknowledged on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero. Betancort points out that in her opinion the project that existed in 2019, with the Podemos-Equo alliance, under the brand Lanzarote en Pie – Sí Podemos, has been “falling apart.” “There have been personal interests of many people, which has disappointed many people,” she adds.
“It has been three years of abandonment, of little communication. There is no really coordinated team, and in the end, to be in a municipality completely alone, without a party to support you, I prefer to represent someone else who takes an interest,” says Elsa Betancort.
The councilor assures that the “the straw that broke the camel's back” is the lack of action by the councilor of the Cabildo, Jorge Peñas, whom she accuses of “not moving” to solve a case of eviction of a family from Teguise.
“What hurts me the most is that he goes around championing ‘not one more family without a roof over their heads,’ but when he is in a councilorship, he is not even capable of supporting or picking up a phone to try to solve it,” questions the councilor of Teguise, who points out that the councilor's work has been “a disappointment” for her.
Betancort emphasizes the “disappointment” she feels for the management of Podemos Lanzarote: “There are only 3 or 4 people who run the party, and an intelligent head who decides who is on one side or the other. And for me that person is Yurena Corujo, who started without doing anything and little by little is climbing steps,” says the councilor.
However, she acknowledges that councilor Myriam Barros “is doing a good job” in the Cabildo of Lanzarote, and that she is even “the only one who is doing it.”
