President Juan Manuel Santos said on Thursday that the party’s “extermination” should have never taken place.
Advertisement
Rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, arrive on top of a truck to El Diamante, in southern Colombia, Friday, Sept. 16, 2016.
After 52 years of conflict, Colombia’s FARC rebels open what leaders hope will be their last wartime conference Saturday, where they will vote on a historic peace deal with the government.
The hard-line former president is ideologically opposed to the leftist rebels and could face major legal issues once a Truth Commission and a Transitional Justice Tribunal begin investigating war crimes, many of which were committed by the military under Uribe’s watch or by paramilitary groups with ties to Uribe’s political allies and family.
Their safety has been ensured by the government, which has also said that they are welcome to launch a political party.
“The peace deal should’ve been signed here”, said Tatiana Pineda, a 36-year-old store vendor.
Arriving from Cuba at the conference site in the vast Yari plains several hours from the town of San Vicente del Caguan, Jimenez underscored the event’s importance. Instead of discussing battlefield strategy, the FARC must settle on a new name for their political movement and deliberate on who it wants to represent it in 10 specially reserved seats in congress created for the group in exchange for laying down its weapons. An Oct. 2 national referendum will give voters the chance to approve the deal for ending a half-century of political violence that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and driven millions from their homes.
The conference is set to mark another first: FARC leaders will be meeting not in secret, but with the authorities’ full support in the presence of around 900 people, including 50 guests and some 350 journalists from around the world.
Recent opinion polls put the “Yes” vote ahead by some 40 percentage points.
The “No” camp had 38.3 percent, it found.
Advertisement
“One notes unanimous support for the accord, for the commander, for the General Staff and for the peace delegation”, Pablo Catatumbo told reporters in El Diamonte, a remote spot in the Colombian Amazon.
