Comunes, the new name of the party of the extinct FARC

Rodrigo Londoño, president of the FARC party, in the center, during a press conference on the occasion of the second assembly of the organization Luis Eduardo Noriega A. / EFE

The political party that emerged from the peace agreement in Colombia will cease to be called FARC.

The militants of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have come to the conclusion that it was inconvenient to keep that acronym in law and have decided to identify themselves as Commons from now on, as they anticipated this Sunday at the end of their second assembly after having left arms four years ago.

The organization has voted in the extraordinary conclave -because it has been postponed for about a year due to the coronavirus pandemic- which was held in a blended way in various parts of the country for a renewed image and less associated with more than half century of war.

"It is a real and transformative bet for the peace of Colombia made by the common people," the group announced through Twitter.

True to its ideology, the party decided to appear before Colombian voters at the beginning of September 2017 without renouncing its historical acronyms, in a nod to its bases that has also been an electoral drag - and at the time hurt susceptibilities in various sectors of the society-.

Rodrigo Londoño himself,

president of the party, had raised since that constitutive congress the inconvenience of keeping that name - but lost 628 to 264 in the final votes - and for some time he has chosen to use another term: "the party of the rose ”, alluding to the traditionally social democratic symbol that also identifies them.

Our new name is #COMUNES.

✊🏻🔥🇨🇴

It is a real and transformative bet for the peace of Colombia made by the common people.

pic.twitter.com/j4nSVyHaf8

- COMMON 🌹 (@PartidoFARC) January 24, 2021

The peace agreement that the ex-combatants sealed at the end of 2016 with the Government of Juan Manuel Santos guarantees the party a bench of ten congressmen for two legislative terms - five in the Senate and five in the House of Representatives.

However, the polls have not forgiven him for decades of armed conflict.

In its premiere in the legislative elections of March 2018, the organization barely obtained 85,000 votes and, after several incidents during the campaign, it resigned from

presidential candidacy

that same year.

The cohesion of the nearly 13,000 ex-guerrillas has been challenged by several episodes.

In the midst of the upsurge in violence in several territories, the incessant murder of ex-combatants who signed the peace -more than 250, according to the figures of the party leadership- is added the appearance of dissidents that withdrew from the peace process.

Among them, that of Iván Márquez, the chief negotiator of the insurgency during the talks in Havana.

“Practice showed us that it had been a mistake, that this name is not sustainable by a party that moves in the legality, when other groups that returned to arms or did not advance towards laying down their arms continue to carry that name ”, Senator Julián Gallo, also known as Carlos Antonio Lozada, had told EL PAÍS at the beginning of the assembly that took place throughout this weekend.

The Colombian State "has not provided the protection granted to the signatories, and worse still, on the other hand, it has not fully committed itself to the implementation of the agreements," Londoño had claimed on Friday, at the installation of the conclave.

The meeting also debated both the party's political program and its electoral orientations, which are crossed by a convergence of forces favorable to the peace agreement with a view to both the next presidential and legislative elections, both in 2022.