Che Guevara era ends: FARC ratifies Colombia peace accord, ending 52-year war
“la paz es la más bella de las victorias, ” rebel leader Rodrigo Londono (known by his nom de guerre, Timochenko), told a crowd of hundreds of FARC fighters at the close of the guerrillas’ congress on the southern Yari Plains.
“We yearn that no Colombians will ever again have to take up arms to make their voices heard and their demands felt, as has been required of us,” Timochenko declared.
The peace agreement would allow FARC to continue to campaign for social change – but this time as a political party. Beginning in 2018, the party will be allowed to compete in local, regional, and federal elections. Until the elections of 2018, the FARC party will have six seats in Congress with voice, but no vote. From 2018 until 2026, the C party will be guaranteed five seats in the 102-seat Senate and five seats in the 166-seat House of Representatives. If, in the elections of 2018 and 2022, the number of votes the FARC party receives will entitle it to more than five seats in each chamber, then its delegation in each chamber will grow accordingly. Beginning with the 2026 election, the party will no longer be guaranteed a congressional representation.
The BBC reports that FARC’s leaders have so far not been clear on details of policies they would try to advance, but the expectation is that the party would follow left-leaning, if not outright Marxist ideology.
“Our initial platform is the implementation of the Havana accords,” Pastor Alape, a member of the FARC’s secretariat, told Reuters. “Our political proposals will have to come from the suggestions of our base.
“We started our political efforts clandestinely and now we aspire, legally, to open our initiatives, together with all sectors of society, to concretely cultivate the political space we are given,” Alape said.
FARC commander Bertulfo Alvarez told a news conference that policies are being drafted and will be revealed in due time.
One mid-level rebel commander said the group wants to decentralize Colombia’s government, including halving the size of Congress, in a bid to combat corruption and ensure communities have control over distribution of royalties from oil and mining projects.
FARC commander Ivan Marquez said that in May 2017, with the process of disarmament complete, the FARC party will hold its first congress as a political organization.
The meeting on Thursday saw two-hundred delegates from FARC units around the country meet at Yari, deep in the mountainous jungle of south-east Colombia.
“We inform the country and the government and the governments and people of the world that the rebel delegates of the congress have given unanimous backing to the final accord,” Marquez said.
On Monday, President Juan Manuel Santos and Timochenko will sign the accord in a an official ceremony in Bogota. The accord will be voted on in a national referendum on 2 October.
Polls show that the a majority of Colombians support the accord.
Analysts say that the leadership of the FARC may well succeed in establishing a political party with a base of support among the rural poor and committed leftists in the big cities, but that many FARC fighters, lacking education and skills and unaccustomed to life in modern Colombia, may decide to join criminal gangs.
