By Gwladys Fouche
OSLO, Sept 11 (Reuters) – New Colombian President Abelardo De La Espriella should fully implement the peace accord signed with Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas a decade ago to help unite a divided country, his predecessor Juan Manuel Santos said.
Santos – who led the Latin American country between 2010 and 2018 – negotiated the peace deal with the FARC and won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
“The elections have greatly polarised the country,” Santos told Reuters during a visit to Oslo to mark the 10-year anniversary of the signing of the pact, which diplomats from Norway and Cuba helped broker.
MORE THAN SIX DECADES OF CONFLICT
“This (the full implementation of the deal) could be a way for the country to find common ground and at the same time be the solution to many of the problems Colombia faces today,” he added, citing poverty among farmers, drug trafficking and security in remaining conflict areas.
Santos remains an influential figure in Colombian politics and a well-known international campaigner for peace-related causes.
Colombia’s ongoing conflict – originally begun over land rights and other social issues – has dragged on for more than six decades, as leftist guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitary squads and drug traffickers have fought the government and each other. Though funding for armed groups has traditionally come largely from drug trafficking, illegal mining of gold is now a major source of their income.
The wide-ranging deal with FARC was built into the country’s constitution, but the ways many of its provisions are rolled out – everything from support for demobilised rebels to land reform to benefit poor farmers – are subject to governmental changes in strategy and focus.
Santos’ successors – who have not always supported the entire accord – have struggled to fully enact it amid fiscal constraints, the COVID-19 pandemic and other political concerns.
De La Espriella, a right-wing lawyer who has legally represented people with ties to paramilitary groups, criticised aspects of the deal during his election campaign, especially the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the transitional justice court tasked with investigating crimes committed during the conflict.
He said he would dismantle the court, which he characterized as ineffective and expensive.
In his inauguration speech, however, De La Espriella said he would respect the special court’s place in Colombia’s judicial system, but that there would be rigorous oversight over the tribunal.
Santos said both his successors, Ivan Duque and Gustavo Petro, did not fully implement the peace accord – which was designed to be rolled out over a 15-year period – and that Petro’s “total peace” policy, where he sought deals with additional armed groups, delayed implementation of the FARC deal.
Petro “concentrated on what he called ‘total peace’, that is, trying to negotiate with criminal groups dispersed throughout the country, at the expense of the deal with the FARC,” Santos said.
“That’s why I hope (De La Espriella) understands that implementing the peace accord is perhaps one of the best programmes of government that he could put into action.”
The peace deal narrowly failed to win the approval of Colombian voters in a 2016 referendum, but was then modified and passed through congress.
Critics – including De La Espriella – have said the reparations sentences meted out by the JEP – including to former guerrilla leaders convicted of kidnappings for ransom and of military ex-soldiers sentenced for their roles in extrajudicial executions – are not harsh enough.
Much of the FARC’s leadership and rank and file demobilised under the deal and the group now operates as a legal political party, though some members have abandoned the accord and returned to arms in so-called ‘dissident’ groups.
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche in Oslo; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Julia Symmes Cobb)
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