Gustavo Petro’s statement surprised everyone and everyone. To his critics, he once again behaved like a leader of the opposition, rather than a head of state approaching the halfway point of his four-year term. The president of Colombia announced this week from the Casa de Nariño that he intends to denounce before the United Nations General Assembly that the Colombian State does not want to comply with the peace agreement it signed at the end of 2016 with the extinct FARC guerrilla. “I can’t tell lies,” he said about the non-compliance. He expressed frustration, in particular, with an agrarian reform that remains unrealized and a transitional justice system that in his opinion is not the closure court that he would like.
His words, like a boomerang, provoked an avalanche of reactions, many of which recalled the recurring criticism of the lack of execution of a Government that took office on August 7, 2022. “It is like a self-denouncement, which produces a state of bewilderment. The international community says: ‘How come the head of state, who is responsible, comes to denounce himself?’” Judge Roberto Vidal, president of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), told Caracol Radio. ), the court that Petro criticizes, which arose from the agreements themselves and is very close to its first substantive decisions.
After the seventh year of implementation, 49% of the commitments are at a minimum level and have not been started, for which there is no evidence to demonstrate their viability to be completed before the 15-year period established for this expires. This has been warned by the Kroc Institute, from the University of Notre Dame (United States), in charge of following up on the agreement. In the last two years there has been the least progress.
Some of the architects of peace with the FARC were quick to respond to the president as well. Senator Humberto de la Calle, who was the chief negotiator of the Government of Juan Manuel Santos, described the statements as “surprising.” “What the Government has to do is comply. The rural reform is equipped with the rules, the execution is lacking,” he stated as an example in a statement in which he pointed out that what has been lacking is will. “It is true that compliance with the agreement has been insufficient. The responsibility, however, falls exclusively on the Executive.” Criticism of the JEP, in particular, must be explained by the Government, he stressed.
Former Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo, another of the negotiators in Havana, pointed out that if Petro goes to the UN, he hopes it will be to commit to accelerating implementation. “It is true that it is going very slowly. The murders of social leaders and former FARC combatants continue in the territories. There is no investment in the 170 PDET municipalities [Planes de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial, los más afectados por el conflicto], is practically paralyzed. And there is nothing in terms of social substitution of illicit crops either. But that is the responsibility of the national government,” he agreed. Hopefully these statements, she continued, “mean a self-criticism for what has not been done in these two years.”
The peace agreement with the FARC has been a watershed in Colombian politics. Since Santos signed it, it was clear that implementation was going to take time to settle and required the commitment of several governments. Implementation, planned to take 15 years, is just halfway done. His successor, Iván Duque (2018-2022), a political godson of former President Álvaro Uribe, was elected with the support of the sectors that opposed the dialogues and was absent from almost all the major events related to the peace agreements. .
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In a clear contrast, Petro positioned himself in the campaign as an enthusiastic defender of that historic pact and attended as president-elect the presentation of the final report of the Truth Commission, also arising from the agreements, to which Duque did not appear. However, since he came to power he has had more than one brush with the architects of that process, who in turn have criticized the ongoing dialogues with the ELN guerrilla and the FARC dissidents.
The multiple negotiations for total peace in Petro should not overshadow the implementation, Santos himself stressed on the seventh anniversary of the signing of the Teatro Colón agreement, last November, a ceremony in which the current president stood him up for the second time. . Implementation is a fundamental condition for any other negotiation to prosper in Colombia, Santos stressed when regretting the Government’s slowness.
In addition to the multiple approaches with an archipelago of armed groups, the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace is responsible for that other task on which criticism accumulates. That of strengthening the implementation of the agreement sealed at the end of 2016 with the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – which includes, among others, a chapter dedicated to measures to guarantee the security of ex-combatants. Rhetoric aside, the Government has demonstrated a weakness in the ability to execute what has already been agreed upon, which includes the protection of the peace signatories.
The Implementation Unit of the final peace agreement, headed by Gloria Cuartas, was born with the Petro Government to replace the defunct Presidential Council for Stabilization and Consolidation, which functioned during the Iván Duque period. From various sectors they have insistently asked President Petro to recover the figure of a High Council to give more teeth to the person responsible for implementation, who has autonomy, power and budget. Petro himself put this idea out in public more than a year ago, but he never crystallized it.
In addition to the implementation itself, the fit of the dissidents of the extinct FARC in total peace, Petro’s ambitious flagship policy, has unleashed a thorny debate. With the self-proclaimed Central General Staff there is already a table in progress – at least with one faction – and with the decimated Second Marquetalia of Iván Márquez – which recently reappeared alive – a delayed installation has been announced. For the most skeptical, granting the EMC spokesperson on behalf of a guerrilla that no longer exists is inconvenient to say the least, and ignores the 2016 agreement. Sergio Jaramillo, the Santos peace commissioner, has said that recognizing the EMC as an armed actor with political status is “the worst strategic error that has been committed in Colombia in the last 25 years and the greatest damage that has been done to the peace process.” In many regions the war that the agreement with the FARC sought to extinguish still rages and violence has intensified. It is time for speech to give way to execution.
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