FARC
to participate in Colombia's 2018 elections
In a
landmark moment in Colombia's history, the government of President
Juan Manuel Santos and the country's left-wing FARC rebels are set to
announce a final peace accord Wednesday in Havana, Cuba, after nearly
four years of negotiations between the two sides of the conflict,
according to sources close to the peace process.
“A deal is
imminent to close the negotiations,” a government official told
reporters Tuesday, adding that an announcement would likely take
place around 7 p.m. local time in Havana. Earlier on Tuesday, FARC
leader Timoleon Jimenez, known as Timochenko, wrote on his Twitter
account, "We are at the doors of important announcements that
bring us close to the final deal." The Twitter account of the
government peace negotiation team shared a photo of FARC and
government negotiators, standing interspersed together, with the
caption, "The day is approaching."
The two
sides of the negotiating table have been in the process of reviewing
a draft deal in recent days. The document is set to be made public
Wednesday afternoon. The historic deal will mark the end of 52 years
of armed internal conflict between government forces and the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, founded in 1964 on Marxist
demands for agrarian reform and rights for rural communities. The
conflict is the longest-running civil war in Latin America.
More:
Colombia’s
soon-to-demobilize FARC guerilla army will participate in the
country’s next general elections in 2018 as part of the final peace
agreement with the government that ends a civil war that has raged
for 52 years.
In a
government press conference Thursday, the day after the
much-anticipated announcement of a final peace deal and the end of
negotiations in Havana, Cuba, official negotiators stressed that the
historic agreement offers an opportunity for a new era of political
participation.
According to
the final text of the peace agreement, the FARC will be guaranteed
five seats in both Colombia’s lower house of Congress and the
Senate in the next two election cycles in 2018 and 2022. The movement
will still run in the elections as part of the process of securing
those seats. Only if the FARC’s new political party falls short of
winning the five seats would the remainder of guaranteed
representatives be assigned.
More:
Comments
Post a Comment