Colombian peace agreement referendum, 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Do you support the final agreement to end the conflict and build a stable and lasting peace? | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Location | Colombia | |||||||||||||||||||||
Date | October 2, 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||
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The Colombian peace plebiscite to ratify the final agreement on the termination of the Colombian conflict between the Colombian government and the FARC guerillas was held on October 2, 2016. [1] It failed with 50.2% voting against it and 49.8% voting in favor. [2]
The Colombian conflict began in the mid-1960s and is a low-intensity asymmetric war between Colombian governments, paramilitary groups, crime syndicates and far-left guerrillas such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the National Liberation Army (ELN), fighting each other to increase their influence in Colombian territory. Two of the most important international actors that have contributed to the Colombian conflict are multinational companies and the United States.
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The aim of this vote was the direct approval or rejection by voters of the agreements signed between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Cartagena de Indias, September 27, 2016. The peace negotiations began on August 26, 2012, in Havana, and concluded on August 25, 2016. [3] [4] [5] The final agreement included topics of rural reform, political participation, the end of hostilities, solutions to the production of illicit drugs, the rights of victims, and the mechanisms of implementation and verification. [6] On July 18, 2016 the Constitutional Court approved the holding of a national plebiscite to validate the peace agreement. [7] The ballot paper consisted of a single question for voters to approve or reject the signed peace agreements:
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People's Army was a guerrilla movement involved in the continuing Colombian armed conflict from 1964 to 2017. It was known to employ a variety of military tactics in addition to more unconventional methods, including terrorism. The FARC–EP was formed during the Cold War period as a Marxist–Leninist peasant force promoting a political line of agrarianism and anti-imperialism.
Havana is the capital city, largest city, province, major port, and leading commercial center of Cuba. The city has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of 781.58 km2 (301.77 sq mi) – making it the largest city by area, the most populous city, and the fourth largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean region.
The Constitutional Court of Colombia is the supreme constitutional court of Colombia. Part of the Judiciary, it is the final appellate court for matters involving interpretation of the Constitution with the power to determine the constitutionality of laws, acts, and statutes.
¿Apoya el acuerdo final para terminación del conflicto y construcción de una paz estable y duradera? [8](Do you support the final agreement to end the conflict and build a stable and lasting peace?)
For the agreement to be approved, the "Yes" votes had to account for at least 13% of the electorate (i.e., 4,396,626 votes out of a total of 34,899,945 registered voters [9] ) and outnumber the "No" votes.
President Juan Manuel Santos, who was a promoter of the peace talks, announced the support for the 'Yes' option. [10] The 'Yes' campaign received the support of many members of the Colombian community from the political left (Gustavo Petro, César Gaviria, Antonio Navarro Wolff, Piedad Cordoba), centre (Antanas Mockus, Sergio Fajardo, Lucho Garzon, Claudia López Hernández) and right (German Vargas Lleras, Enrique Peñalosa, Mauricio Cárdenas). The political parties that were in favour are the Alternative Democratic Pole, the Social Party of National Unity, Radical Change, the Independent Movement of Absolute Renovation, the Indigenous Social Alliance Movement, the Green Party of Colombia, the Colombian Conservative Party and the Liberal Party of Colombia. [11] [12]
Juan Manuel Santos Calderón is a Colombian politician. From 2010 to 2018, he was the President of Colombia. He was the sole recipient of the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize.
Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego is a Colombian politician, economist, and presidential candidate who previously served as mayor of Bogotá. As a left-wing politician, Petro was a member of the guerrilla group M-19 in the 1980s, which later evolved into the Alianza Democrática M-19, a political party in which Petro also participated as a member of the national congress in the 1990s. Petro also served as a senator as a member of the Alternative Democratic Pole party following the 2006 legislative elections with the second largest vote in the country. In 2009, he resigned his position to aspire to the presidency of Colombia in the 2010 Colombian presidential election, finishing fourth in the race.
César Augusto Gaviria Trujillo is a Colombian economist and politician who served as the President of Colombia from 1990 to 1994, Secretary General of the Organization of American States from 1994 to 2004 and National Director of the Colombian Liberal Party from 2005 to 2009. During his tenure as president, he summoned the Constituent Assembly of Colombia that enacted the Constitution of 1991.
Although most public figures in Colombia refused to explicitly declare their support for either the 'Yes' or 'No' vote, many indicated their support for 'Yes' through various messages. Colombia's best-known singers Shakira, Carlos Vives, Juanes and Fonseca all posted messages of support and hope for peace on their Twitter accounts. [13] [14] International footballer Falcao wrote a letter to the newspaper El Tiempo in which he stated that he imagined "a country with the capacity to forgive", [15] while former Colombian striker Carlos Valderrama was more outspoken in his support, appearing at campaign rallies for the 'Yes' vote and saying he wanted a better country for his children. [16] Cyclist Nairo Quintana, who had won the Vuelta a España and come second in the Tour de France in 2016, asked his fellow Colombians to support the peace accord, describing it as "a step we had to take". [17] Novelist Héctor Abad Faciolince, whose father Héctor Abad Gómez had been murdered for his stance on human rights, expressed his happiness that an accord had been reached. [18] Internationally renowned sculptor Fernando Botero sent a sculpture of a white dove to the Colombian presidential palace, created in his signature "fat" style of portraying people and animals. It was accompanied by a message that he had wanted to create "this present for my country in order to express my support and my solidarity with this [peace] process". [19] A Twitter campaign to promote the peace process outside Colombia, entitled "#Peace4Colombia", attracted the support of Colombian-born Hollywood actor John Leguizamo and Spanish singer Miguel Bose, who holds honorary Colombian nationality. [20] Most displaced Colombian victims living outside of the country supported the Yes vote, and voted accordingly, although some were critical of having been excluded from the peace process. [21]
Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll is a Colombian singer, songwriter, dancer, businesswoman, and philanthropist. Born and raised in Barranquilla, her first studio albums, Magia and Peligro, failed to attain commercial success in the 1990s; however, she rose to prominence in Latin America with her major-label debut, Pies Descalzos (1996), and her fourth album, Dónde Están los Ladrones? (1998).
Carlos Alberto Vives Restrepo is a Colombian singer, songwriter and actor.
Juan Esteban Aristizábal Vásquez, known professionally as Juanes, is a Colombian musician who was a member of the rock band Ekhymosis and is now a solo artist. In 2000, his solo debut album Fíjate Bien won three Latin Grammy Awards. According to his record label, Juanes has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide.
The most prominent campaigner for the 'No' vote was current senator and former president Álvaro Uribe. [22] Uribe built his career, including two terms as president, on promises to tackle the guerrilla groups in the country, and had been an outspoken critic of Santos, his successor as president, ever since Santos began negotiations with the FARC. Uribe was supported by senior members of his Democratic Center party, including the 2014 presidential candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga, 2014 vice-presidential candidate Carlos Holmes Trujillo, and senator Iván Duque Márquez. The party presented several arguments against the peace deal, among them that the guerrillas would not serve time in prison, that they would automatically be awarded ten seats in Congress, that the deal would legalize narcotrafficking, and that in pursuing the negotiations Santos had gone beyond the terms of the Colombian constitution. [23] [24]
Álvaro Uribe Vélez is a Colombian politician who served as the 31st President of Colombia from 7 August 2002 to 7 August 2010.
Democratic Centre is a conservative political party in Colombia founded by Álvaro Uribe, former President, former Vice President Francisco Santos Calderón and former Finance Minister Óscar Iván Zuluaga. It is a self-described party of the centre, although in opinion groups it is often considered a right-wing party. Iván Duque, the incumbent President of Colombia is a member of the party.
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Other senior political figures who spoke out against the peace accord were conservative former Inspector General Alejandro Ordóñez, who feared it would legitimize violence within the country, [25] and former president Andrés Pastrana, rejecting the position of his own Conservative Party. [26] As Uribe's predecessor as president, Pastrana had himself attempted to negotiate a peace deal with the FARC between 1999 and 2002.
Outside of politics, other well-known Colombians also rejected the peace deal. Novelist and filmmaker Fernando Vallejo, who was born in Colombia but who became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 2007, launched a strong attack against the negotiations during a debate at the World Summit of Art and Culture for Peace in Bogotá on April 6, 2016, describing president Santos as "shameless" and calling the FARC "thugs". [27] The strongly religious footballer Daniel Alejandro Torres, a regular starter in the Colombian national football team during 2016, published a video on his Instagram account in which he accused Santos of not placing Jesus at the heart of the negotiations. [28] John Jairo Velásquez (known as "Popeye"), the former hitman for Pablo Escobar and the Medellín drug cartel, also expressed his opposition to the accord. [14]
Attitudes among Colombians have matched the elite cues from Santos and Uribe: those who support Uribe's party and preferred candidates dropped down in support for the peace process, while those who continued to support Santos did the opposite. [29] Moreover, messaging can shift support on the peace process: support for a peace process is higher than specific policies included in the peace process, and support is even lower if the policies are tied to the FARC. [30]
The following table shows the results of opinion polling from the date of the announcement of the wording of the referendum question on August 30, 2016 up to the date of the referendum on October 2, 2016. [8]
Date(s) conducted | Sample size | Margin of error | Polling organisation/client | Yes | No |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Aug 31–Sep 1, 2016 | 2109 | 2.13% | Datexco/W Radio & El Tiempo [31] | 59.5% | 33.2% |
Sep 1–5, 2016 | 1526 | 4.9% | Ipsos Napoleón Franco/RCN, La FM & Semana [32] | 72% | 28% |
Sep 6–8, 2016 | 2109 | 2.13% | Datexco/W Radio & El Tiempo [33] | 64.8% | 28.1% |
Sep 13–15, 2016 | 2109 | 2.13% | Datexco/W Radio & El Tiempo [34] | 55.3% | 38.3% |
Sep 14–18, 2016 | 1200 | 4.9% | Invamer–Gallup Colombia/Caracol Televisión, Blu Radio & El Espectador [35] | 67.6% | 32.4% |
Sep 15–20, 2016 | 3007 | 2.0% | Cifras & Conceptos/Caracol Radio & Red + Noticias [36] | 54% | 34% |
Sep 21–25, 2016 | 1524 | 3.5% | Ipsos Napoleón Franco/RCN, La FM & Semana [37] | 66% | 34% |
Sep 25–26, 2016 | 1471 | 3.7% | Cifras & Conceptos/Caracol Radio & Red + Noticias [38] | 62% | 38% |
Choice | Votes | % |
---|---|---|
6,438,552 | 50.22 | |
Yes | 6,382,901 | 49.78 |
Valid votes | 12,821,453 | 98.15 |
Invalid or blank votes | 241,464 | 1.85 |
Total votes | 13,062,917 | 100.00 |
Registered voters and turnout | 34,899,945 | 37.43 |
Source: CNE |
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