Demobilization process slow to advance in Colombia.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
At a time when implementation of the peace agreement between the government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionaria de Colombia (FARC) guerrillas appears to be significantly delayed, Colombia's principal political parties have been dangerously quick to start campaigning for the next presidential election, which doesn't take place until May 2018.
Their enthusiasm is being dampened, however, by polls that show Humberto de la Calle, the lead negotiator in the peace process, as an early favorite, and by a corruption scandal involving the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. The scandal originated in Brazil (NotiSur, Jan. 13, 2017) but has since spread to countries throughout the world, including Panama (NotiCen, March 9, 2017) and Colombia, where it is impacting a good part of the political leadership (NotiSur, Feb. 24, 2017). Most affected is the conservative Centro Democratico (CD), which lost its top candidate option as a result.
President Juan Manuel Santos, for his part, is turning public attention to the many victims of the country's 52-year-long civil war. In early April, he created a truth commission to study the approximately 50,000 people who went missing during the conflict. He also shared the state's latest estimate of the total number of people killed, mutilated, disappeared, kidnapped, tortured, or displaced: 8,376,463, according to the Registro Unico de Victimas, the official victims registry.
In tribute to those victims, an event was held April 10 in Santa Ana, a hamlet in the northwestern department of Antioquia, to plant the first "Peace Forest." The US organization behind the initiative, Saving the Amazon, based in Hikesville, New York, is planning 50 such forests, with as many trees as victims, each bearing the name of a person impacted by the war.
That same day, Santos noted that 17 civil society, labor, and human rights leaders have been killed so far this year. Earlier in the month, Ombudsman Carlos Negret suggested in an interview with the weekly newsmagazine Semana that "the recent attacks on social activists represent an effort to ruin the last step in the peace process, to sink it."
Negret's comments came two months after the rebels began leaving their encampments and gathering in 26 transitional zones, as agreed to in the peace deal signed on Sept. 26, 2016 (NotiSur, July 15, 2016). The move is a first step toward full demobilization but is not playing out as hoped, according to news outlets.
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