Farc rebels don political hat

BOGOTA: Colombia’s leftist Farc rebel group will debut its political party at a conference that started yesterday, a key step in its transition into a civilian organisation after more than 50 years of war and its first chance to announce policy to sceptical voters.

The six-day meeting in Bogota of Farc members, who have handed in more than 8 000 weapons to the UN during their demobilisation, is expected to conclude on Friday with a platform that the party, still officially unnamed, will campaign on in elections next year.

Under its 2016 peace deal with the government to end its part in a war that killed more than 220 000, the majority of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) fighters were granted amnesty and allowed to participate in politics.

Whether Colombians, many of whom revile the rebels, will be inspired to back them remains to be seen.

The Farc’s often Marxist rhetoric strikes many as a throwback to their 1964 founding, but proposals for reforms to labyrinthine property laws may get traction with rural voters who struggle as subsistence farmers.

The peace accord, rejected by less than a 1% margin in a referendum before being modified and enacted, awards the Farc’s party 10 automatic seats in Congress up to 2026, but the group may campaign for others.

“I think the Farc will try for a regional consolidation, using the presence and influence they have in certain provinces,” said Catalina Jimenez, politics professor at Externado University.

“At a national level they need a large number of votes they still don’t have.”

The Farc is open to coalitions, the group said. Fractured by in-fighting, leftist parties have long struggled in conservative-leaning Colombia, despite some success in winning urban positions.

“We have to define our course of action, which will surely bring up the need to have coalitions,” Farc secretariat member Pastor Alape said, adding the group wants a “big political convergence that redefines the limits of the left”.