Il referendum del 2 Ottobre 2016 in Colombia: la vittoria del No: Analisi del processo di pace per porre fine al conflitto armato tra governo e FARC

Abstract

The process of peace between FARC and Colombian government was very long and complex: it began in 1984 during the Betancur government and end nowadays thanks to the 24th November 2016 Peace Agreement under Santos administration. During 52 years of conflict, the country has experienced a type of violence that was different from the other Latin American countries. When an analysis of the country is made, we have to be aware that the connection between guerrilla, politics and organized crime is very strict: in fact, it was the historical war between the two traditional parties, liberal and conservative, that provoked the Violencia, the period of structural violence that showed the weaknesses of the political apparatus. During those years, in fact, a new political mind-set grew among the population, above all after the assassination of the liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán: the loss of trust in the government was decisive in the creation of guerrilla that started believing that only a social revolution would have taken back the order. In this context, the Communist Party started emerging as the principal supporter firstly of the peasants’ revolution and, then, of the guerrilla movement. The Peace Agreement has as the main objective to build the peace involving Colombians protecting and ensuring the respect of the human rights, above all for the victims of the conflict. During the negotiations, it has analysed the participation of the citizens in giving ideas and suggestions: more than 60.000 people had an active participation in making the Agreement real and legitimate. However, the adoption of the Peace Agreements reforms needs that each citizen plays an active role in the society to the implementation of the reforms. The winning of the NO in the referendum made us understand that the peacebuilding process is still long. The question asked to citizens was “Do you support the final agreement to end the conflict and construct a stable and enduring peace?” and it was analysed if the NO could represent the popular rejection of the Peace Agreement or if it depended on other factors: an article of the Washington Post reported that talking about the winning of NO is statistically incorrect if we do not count the errors in the voting process. In this sense, what the article analysed is firstly that the counting procedure was made by individuals and, although the referendum was very fair and transparent, what we have to be aware is that let individuals count it could easily allow a misclassification of several votes. Secondly, the article reported the number of votes: 6,431,376 for NO, 6,377,482 for YES, but also 170,946 nullified votes and several unmarked ballots.The narrow margin of the winning of NO against the YES left uncertainty in the country, but both parties agreed that they would have never come back to fight. Many Colombians were concerned about the leniency of the agreement they had to approve, above all after passing through years of kidnappings, violence and murders. These concerns were based on the lack of trust in FARC and in a possible end of the violence: the reason behind NO is that the conflict left several open cuts not so easy to seal up and forgiving the FARC actions will not be immediate. Despite the lack of trust and the winning of NO, the country seems to have finally found the right path to have social justice.