Colombia’s constititutional court gave its approval on July 18 for a
popular referendum on a historic peace deal being negotiated with FARC
rebels.
“There is a green light for us, the Colombian people, to
approve the peace deal with our votes,” President Juan Manuel Santos
said.
The top court held more than eight hours of deliberations
before giving its go-ahead to a government bill on the plebiscite, which
has already been approved by Congress.
The Colombian government
and the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are in the
final phase of four years of talks that it is hoped will result in a
peace deal putting to an end a half-a-century of conflict.
The rebels last month signed a cease-fire and disarmament deal with the government, with the aim of becoming a political party.
The government said it hoped to move on to a full peace deal within weeks.
Alejo
Vargas, an analyst at the National University’s Center for Reflection
and Monitoring of the Peace Dialogues, has said government supporters of
the peace deal are in the majority.
In a referendum, he estimated, “up to 70 percent would vote ‘Yes.’”
A
unit of Colombia’s FARC rebel group, the Armando Rios First Front, said
July 6 that it will not lay down arms or demobilize under the potential
peace deal with the government.
Columbia’s ambassador to Turkey expressed July 11 high hopes for the eventual outcome of the peace deal being negotiated.
“The conflict in Colombia with FARC, it [has been going on for] more or less 55 years,” the ambassador said.
