Colombia must give voice to FARC rebels to consolidate peace deal: Pundit

Press TV has interviewed Richard Becker, with ANSWER coalition from San Francisco, to discuss the prospect of the historic peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym FARC) to end one of the world's longest-running conflicts - a 52-year war that has claimed 220,000 lives.

Here is a rough transcription of the interview:

Press TV: Could this really be the end of decades of conflict between the FARC and the government there?

Becker: I think that it very well could be. But with this caveat that in the mid-1980s a similar ceasefire agreement and demobilization agreement was reached and the FARC and other organizations formed a progressive party called the Patriotic Union. And over the next three years, at least 3,000 members of the Patriotic Union including its leaders were killed by right-wing death squads.

In Colombia today, it appears that a majority of the population, which has to ratify through a plebiscite this agreement, is for the agreement. The former president Alvaro Uribe, who took an extreme stance and allied Colombia's military more tightly with the right-wing death squads, has proclaimed that he is in favor of a no-vote campaign. If there were to be a no vote, then there could be an intensification of the war.

The other possibility that we have to take into account is that if Uribe and the death squads that still exist in Colombia were to start a campaign of murdering leaders and members of the FARC as they demobilized, that would also have the possibility of derailing this. But at the present time, it does appear that the FARC is ratifying this. It is having a big final conference. And then on October 2nd,  the people of Colombia will be voting in a plebiscite on the agreement.

Press TV: What kind of political power do you think the government has guaranteed to the FARC to lay down their arms and accept this peace agreement?

Becker: It has guaranteed to them seats in congress between now and 2026. Over the next ten years, the FARC and whatever party it forms, which I assume will not be called the FARC, will have a guarantee of five seats in the Lower House and five seats in the Senate of Colombia. There are other provisions for uplifting the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of Colombian society, particularly among the indigenous people, the Afro-Colombian people. Very large parts of the country live in great poverty and have been the base of the FARC in the face of a kind of a duopoly that has existed for many years, where the liberals and conservatives representing the elite of the country have alternated office and basically shut out everybody else.

Press TV: How could the guerrillas' Marxist views interact with the government's political outlook?

Becker: I don't think that the views of the group would determine them becoming a military force, adapting the armed struggle route when the FARC was formed back in the mid-1950s. It was because of being shut out. Everyone else was shut out of politics. I think that they want to  be a political factor; they want to be able to organize in the country; they should be able to organize. And if they are able to organize, I think the agreement will hold. If they are not and face the kind of repression that they've seen in the past, the agreement could fail.

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