The peace agreement with the extinct FARC, signed in 2016 and which allowed the demobilization of more than 13,000 combatants, does not stop receiving darts. The last is the Government’s approach that its implementation is unviable if it does not come hand in hand with a Constituent Assembly. The idea of a Constituent Assembly, proposed by the FARC during the negotiations and rejected by the Government, was a point of disagreement that the peace process overcame at the time. In the end, it was agreed that it was not necessary to change the Constitution, but rather to promote the one we had. And we have
For the FARC, not including a Constituent Assembly was not an impediment to signing a 320-page agreement that puts victims at the center. Its six robust points include deep transformations, a demobilization and disarmament process, and for the first time, a commitment to justice in which they decided “not to exchange impunities.” An agreement that addressed all these issues not as isolated chapters but with a comprehensive vision. Although the idea of a National Political Agreementits objective was not to change the Constitution but to join forces to promote the implementation of the agreement.
The Government of President Petro, which has been talking about a Constituent Assembly in other spaces, recently decided to present it as an indispensable part of the peace agreement, essential for its implementation. “This is a document of the people, of the Colombian nation. It is an instrument of popular struggle, with legitimacy that goes beyond the Constitution. “I can, through the high contracting parties, summon a National Constituent Assembly,” said the president on May 23.
The campaign of No In the peace agreement plebiscite he legitimately questioned whether members of a guerrilla who committed very serious crimes later participated in politics or ended up serving sanctions that did not send them to jail. These and other points were raised in the renegotiation and enriched the agreement. But that campaign also launched darts sowing unfounded fears: that ex-combatants would be treated better than victims or the most vulnerable population, that the agreement would force a transformation of gender education, or that the FARC would create its own justice system of impunity.
Then came the darts of Uribista president Iván Duque. With an opposition mandate and having been part of the campaign of the No, temporarily stopped the start of the transitional justice court, trying to hurt some of its essential elements. These darts were interpreted as an attack by a sector that wanted to “tear up” the agreement. But they did not prevent its implementation and they did not take away the president’s duty to implement it, and put it in the hands of a senior advisor with a technical office.
The current context is complicated. The transformation of the armed conflict, the multiplicity of violent groups, the absence of political will in some cases, the difficulty for transitional justice to produce sentences and close cases, and the complex institutional structure and management have meant immense obstacles to implementation. While it overcomes all these obstacles, the peace agreement receives its most recent dart, hanging a Constituent Assembly.
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Each president seeks to leave a legacy in terms of peace and security. The agreement imposes on him the task of complying with a state policy, which was not his initiative and probably would not have been his choice, and whose implementation requires a lot of work, high management and enormous political will.
In response to this challenge, the narrative of President Petro’s Government has focused on underscoring the unfeasibility of fulfilling the agreement, “the failure of the State”. To this end, he proposes as a solution that the international community, from the UN Security Council, and the people, from a Constituent Assembly, be the ones to demand it from the State. He returns the proposal surpassed in the Havana negotiation, trying to make it more relevant than it had on that occasion, using the international nature of the agreement.
The problem, beyond many others that could be debated, is that by giving flight to a political project, the Government is throwing a deep blow at the peace agreement. Its compliance is no longer the responsibility of the State and the Government, and begins to depend on the fate of the proposal for a Constituent Assembly.
The Government can continue by another means with its project to convene a Constituent Assembly. For this there are channels and processes promoted by citizens from the Constitution and a political task to do with the different sectors. It can also, as the agreement indicates, “convene all the living forces of the country to conclude a great National Political Agreement aimed at defining the institutional reforms and adjustments necessary to address the challenges that peace demands, launching a new framework of political and social coexistence”, but that does not require a constituent. Constituent Assembly and Political Agreement are not the same, and it is key that the Government does not confuse one thing with the other.
The signatories of the agreement have raised their voices pointing out difficulties in the way the transitional justice system works. People in the territories most affected by violence demand that the transformations that are necessary to overcome their historical abandonment take place. These are the knots that the agreement needs to be untangled. This is where the Government can focus its political will and where the international community really has a mandate to support. The Constituent Assembly’s proposal distracts from these urgent tasks and further complicates the implementation of the agreement.
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