The president of the FARC party, Rodrigo Londoño, 'Timochenko', during a press conference on the assembly of the organization Luis Eduardo Noriega A. / EFE
The militancy of the Fuerza Alternativa Revolucionaria del Común, the party that emerged from the peace agreement in Colombia, debated throughout this weekend to leave behind the acronyms that identified the extinct FARC guerrilla during more than half a century of armed conflict in its second assembly, of an extraordinary nature because the meeting has been postponed for about ten months due to the coronavirus pandemic.
"Reality showed that choosing this name was not the right thing to do," said Rodrigo Londoño,
Timochenko,
the top leader who sealed the historic pact with the Government of Juan Manuel Santos at the end of 2016, and who has usually chosen for some time for using "the party of the rose".
True to its ideology, the FARC burst onto the political board in early September 2017 without renouncing its acronym, in a nod to its bases, and presented itself to society with a traditionally social democratic symbol such as the red rose.
Londoño recalled that in that constitutive congress he had already raised the inconvenience of keeping that acronym, but was defeated in the final votes - by 628 delegates compared to 264 -.
"It is very complex to maintain the name of FARC, not because we are sorry for it, not because we are ashamed, but because it was the name with which we participated in the conflict," and it is closely associated with "that pain left by the war." , has admitted the now president of the party.
Having preserved that association with the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia has been an electoral drag.
The peace agreement guarantees the party a ten-seat bench for two legislative terms, five in the House of Representatives and five in the Senate.
Hence, the former guerrilla has made its debut in Congress despite the fact that the ballot box has not forgiven it for half a century of war, since in the March 2018 elections it obtained just 85,000 votes - and resigned from Londoño's presidential candidacy.
Since that conclave that established the party's statutes occurred, multiple crises have erupted.
Probably the most serious has been the flight of Iván Márquez, the chief negotiator of the insurgency in the Havana talks, who rearmed in August 2019 and has presented his dissidence as the new FARC.
With the transitional justice system in place, Colombia has also come to the painful truth of the war.
The ex-guerrillas have recognized, among many other crimes, the assassination of the conservative leader Álvaro Gómez Hurtado and two attacks that Germán Vargas Lleras, the vice president of Santos, survived, to whom they apologized.
Four years after signing, the agreement is going through a stormy moment.
The incessant murder of social leaders and signatories of peace, as well as the resurgence of violence in different territories, threaten implementation.
"We are very concerned about the difficult security situation of ex-combatants, social leaders and Afro-Colombians, and we strongly condemn the murder of 25 ex-combatants who were assassinated while awaiting a response to their request for protection measures," said the Verification Mission of the UN in Colombia when presenting its report to the Security Council.
There are already more than 250 ex-combatants killed in the framework of the peace process and more than 500 social leaders who have fallen since Iván Duque came to power two and a half years ago, Londoño said this Friday during the installation of the assembly, which concludes the next Sunday and also debate both the party's program and its electoral guidelines.
In his speech, he warned that the Colombian State "on the one hand has not provided the agreed protection to the signatories, and worse still, on the other, it has not fully committed itself to the implementation of the agreements", which it considers the first condition to stop the trickle of murders.
"Of course they are, they are killing us, they are failing us, and in this government there are no real possibilities to change that trend.
Moreover, in this 2021 insurance they will resort to all possible tricks, to seek to suffocate the process, "said
Timochenko
in his diagnosis.
“The way to reverse this trend is first of all by organizing the defense of what was agreed upon through mass actions, such as the pilgrimage, and working hard so that in 2022 a candidate who is committed to the presidency will emerge victorious for the Presidency. implementation of the peace accords, as well as a Congress that mostly accompanies the new president in that purpose ”, he concluded.
The FARC leadership itself also arrives at the meeting fragmented. Congressmen Victoria Sandino and Israel Zúñiga - better known as Benkos Biohó, who replaced Iván Márquez when he resigned from his seat, before rearming himself -, as well as former commander Milton de Jesús Toncel, better known as Joaquín Gómez, announced in a public letter that they will not attend, since "it is an Assembly not only with its back to the country, but also divorced from the problems of the former guerrilla." Londoño has considered that position "unfortunate" at a time when they need to unify for peace and reconciliation, but "respectable" on the stage of legal politics. "Finally, the best proof that we are a political party and not an army is that you can disagree with the direction of the leadership," Senator Julián Gallo, known as Carlos Antonio Lozada, told this newspaper.