Saving Colombia’s peace

ASK the people a question, and you may not get the answer you expected. That happened to David Cameron with the Brexit referendum, and now it has happened to Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president. In a plebiscite on October 2nd Colombians made fools of the opinion pollsters and voted to reject his government’s peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas by the narrowest of margins—less than 0.5%.

For Mr Santos that was an embarrassment. He had lined up an array of international support for the deal. For Colombia it is dangerous. The agreement came after four years of hard talking, and almost certainly represented the best available compromise between peace and justice. FARC leaders who confessed to war crimes would not go to jail, but they would be judged and punished under a strict legal framework.

Several factors explain the voters’ rejection (see article). The weather didn’t help: Hurricane Matthew struck a glancing blow to Colombia’s Yes-leaning Caribbean coast, where turnout was exceptionally low. Mr Santos, an aloof patrician presiding over a slowing economy, is unpopular. His predecessor-turned-foe, Álvaro Uribe, who inspired the No campaign, has the common touch. But the overwhelming factor was that, after decades of terrorism, extortion, kidnapping and drug-trafficking, many Colombians look upon the FARC with mistrust and hatred.

The No campaign capitalised on these emotions with a simple and partly deceptive story: the agreement granted impunity to the FARC, it said, and tougher terms can be extracted from them. In fact, the talks stalled for a year over the FARC’s refusal to become the first guerrilla movement in history to agree to hand over its weapons in order to go straight to jail.

So what now? Both Mr Santos and the FARC say they will honour a ceasefire but, on the government’s side, only until the end of the month. Mr Uribe has a political responsibility to back up his claim that such a complex agreement can be substantially renegotiated: he should offer a serious alternative to an early return to war. It is encouraging that he has met Mr Santos and named three representatives to talk to the government. It is helpful, too, that he has rejected calls for a constituent assembly. Rather than offering a solution, that would have been an unwarranted distraction. On the other hand, Mr Uribe’s proposal for isolated measures (such as an amnesty for rank-and-file guerrillas) outside the scope of the agreement looks like an attempt to impose elements of a unilateral deal on the FARC which has scant chance of success.

The FARC should bend, too

Mr Uribe and Mr Santos, once allies, abhor each other. If Colombia is to salvage anything from this mess, the two men have to find a way to work together. But the main onus now lies with the FARC. Their commitment to peace has recently started to look genuine. They cannot ignore the verdict of the voters, however much that might suit them. They should recognise that peace without political support is a mirage.

The FARC should be pressed for at least two additional concessions. The first is to accept that their recent promise to declare ill-gotten assets and pay reparations to victims should become a binding addendum to the agreement. The second is that the “effective restrictions on liberty” to be imposed on sentenced guerrilla commanders should look more like a prison farm than a holiday camp.

Time is short: the FARC’s troops cannot remain in limbo indefinitely, nor can the UN team that was to supervise their disarmament. Barring a tripartite commitment to reach a consensus, a slide back into war is all too likely.