Colombia President Santos: ‘Farc peace deal by 20 July’
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos says he expects a peace deal to end more than 50 years of conflict with the country’s largest rebel group, Farc, to be reached within a month.
Mr Santos said the country would enter a new era if the talks, which started in 2012, were successfully concluded.
A previous deadline set by Mr Santos to complete the negotiations with the rebels was missed on 23 March.
Santos declared last week that, if the deal is not approved, “we’ll be back to war. . . They [the FARC] are ready to return to urban war, which is worse tham rural war” (video in Spanish),
He also said that would mean higher taxes (link in Spanish).
Is Santos ‘intimidating’ Colombia into ratifying FARC peace deal? Sure sounds like it,
rather than promoting the benefits of peace, Santos last Thursday warned the FARC is prepared to return to urban warfare if a peace deal does not find public approval.
And,
Santos, who suffers one of the highest presidential disapproval ratings in decades, has already been forced to retract his comment on the FARC’s ability to take the war to the cities.
But apparently he continues to want to raise taxes all the same,
“If peace is not approved, here come more taxes. If it is, also. You can etch it in stone or marble, or anything you want.”
Si no se firma la paz, vienen los impuestos. Si se firma, también. Pueden grabarlo en piedra o en mármol, en lo que ustedes quieran.
— GustavoGómezCórdoba (@gusgomez1701) June 21, 2016
Uribe writes,
“In this process, terrorism is emboldened and the citizenry intimidated, when it should be the other way around.”
En este proceso el terrorismo está envalentonado y la ciudadanía intimidada cuando debe ser todo lo contrario. https://t.co/srf9vlRY7f
— Álvaro Uribe Vélez (@AlvaroUribeVel) June 21, 2016
Other links,
