BOGOTA, Colombia—Colombia’s president is moving fast to hold a national referendum on a peace deal meant to end a half-century of bloody conflict with leftist rebels, saying he will give congress the text of the deal on Thursday.
“Today is the beginning of the end to the suffering, pain and tragedy of war,” President Juan Manuel Santos said Wednesday night in a televised address after the deal was announced in Havana, where talks went on for four years. He said he would hold an Oct. 2 yes-or-no vote on the accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
He planned to make the full text of the accord public Thursday as it is formally delivered to congress, which cannot block the referendum.
As Santos spoke, some 400 people gathered at a plaza in Colombia’s capital to celebrate the country’s best chance yet of ending decades of political violence that has killed more than 220,000 people and driven more than 5 million from their homes. Several carried candles and were dressed in white to symbolize peace while a giant red, blue and yellow national flag was carried through the crowd.
“I can die in peace because finally I'll see my country without violence, with a future for my children,” Orlando Guevara, 57, said tearfully.
Negotiators reached the accord after working around the clock for several days to hammer out the final sensitive details.
Among last-minute concessions were guarantees that the FARC’s still-unnamed political movement will have a minimum of 10 seats in congress for two legislative periods. After 2026, the former rebels will have to prove their political strength at the ballot box
“We’ve won the most beautiful of all battles: the peace of Colombia,” the chief FARC negotiator, known by the nom de guerre of Ivan Marquez, said at the announcement in Havana.
