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Colombians vote in elections with participation of former rebel group FARC

Iran Press TV

Sun Mar 11, 2018 11:17AM

Colombians are taking to the polls to elect new lawmakers, with candidates from the leftist former guerrilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) taking part in the election for the first time.

Polls opened at 8:00 am (1300 GMT) on Sunday and will close at 4:00 pm.

FARC signed a peace deal with the government two years ago, after half a century of armed conflict, and disarmed its 7,000-strong forces. It re-launched as a political group called Common Alternative Revolutionary Force. The name of the party has the same Spanish acronym as the name of the former rebel group.

"This is the first election in half a century when we will vote in peace, without the FARC as an armed group, but as a political party," said President Juan Manuel Santos, who signed the peace deal with the FARC.

The peace deal guarantees FARC 10 of the 280 Congress seats.

Meanwhile, a resurgent right, bitterly opposed to the peace deal with FARC, is expected to poll strongly in the elections. Candidates hailing from conservative parties opposed to the peace deal are predicted to win an absolute majority in Congress, and push on to win the presidential election in a few months.

Opinion polls are predicting ex-president and senator Alvaro Uribe and his Centro Democratico Party, along with other conservative parties opposed to the peace deal, to win.

Conservatives have vowed to scrap the deal with the former rebels if they gain political power.

"The mere fact of not applying what has been signed would be enough for this agreement to be ineffective," said Frederic Masse, an expert on the conflict at Colombia's Externado University. "It would be a more pernicious strategy than to renegotiate."

Felipe Botero, a political scientist at the University of the Andes, said resurgent conservatives could also let the laws implementing the deal lapse, to the extent that they "are never voted on or not presented" to the new Congress.

The ELN – the country's last active rebel group – is observing a ceasefire during the elections.