Screenshot / Fair use.On September 26, the Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP was signed with a pen made from a bullet, while the Air Force “fumigated” the colours of the Colombian flag over a crowd all clad in white. These planes are all too similar – if not the same – to the ones that up until very recently sprayed down chemical herbicides over vast areas of the Colombian countryside.
Six days later, in a referendum designed by the Santos administration to be the final form of approval for the agreement, 51.2 per cent out of the Colombians who turned out to vote, a mere 38 per cent, issued a ‘NO’ to the agreement. The difference was 55,651 votes.
The divisions that have separated the ‘no’ from the ‘yes’ are much deeper than the current Uribe vs. Santos model that the media is now spinning. In fact politically, ex-president Alvaro Uribe and the current, Juan Manuel Santos, who was Uribe’s minister of war during his presidency, are not actually that different.
