Colombian voters narrowly reject government-FARC peace deal.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
A misleading campaign organized by the extreme right managed in the span of just 10 hours --the time allotted for an Oct. 2 plebiscite in which barely a third of eligible voters participated--to thwart what had taken the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) 45 painstaking months to accomplish: a comprehensive peace deal, signed Sept. 26, that looked to end 52 years of brutal civil war.
Does the "No" vote in the peace-deal referendum mean that Colombia is an antidemocratic, war loving country? Not likely. In Uruguay, a demonstrably democratic country with plenty of plebiscite experience, people came to the conclusion some time ago that major conceptual issues, matters that are almost philosophical in nature, shouldn't be submitted to a simple "Yes" or "No" vote (NotiSur, Nov. 6, 2009). The situation in Colombia, instead, raises a different question: Did it really make sense to hold a referendum on an accord that had been signed just six days earlier, without taking the time to properly educate people about the contents of the deal? The journalist Stella Calloni argued in the Brazilian online magazine Dialogos do Sul that the answer, as the Uruguayans concluded earlier, is no.
Colombians continue to pursue peace despite the "No" result. On Oct. 10, eight days after the referendum, the government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN), the country's second largest guerrilla force after the FARC, announced in Venezuela that they would begin official peace talks on Oct. 27 in Quito, Ecuador. The two sides had already been engaged in secret negotiations. Before the announcement, the ELN agreed to government demands that it turn kidnapped civilian captives over to the International Committee of the Red Cross. "Now that we're moving forward with the ELN, it will be a complete peace," Santos said. Ecuador is one of the countries--along with Venezuela, Norway, Chile, Cuba, and Brazil--that helped oversee the unofficial phase of the government-ELN negotiations.
Minuscule margin
Of the 34.9 million people eligible to vote, only 36.7%--far less than the normal election average of more than 50%--participated in the Oct. 2 referendum. The "No" option won, but with support from just 18.43% of the eligible voting population, versus 18.27% who chose "Yes." The other 63.3% of eligible voters didn't even take part in the transcendent decision.
"One has to really think about that...
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