The president of Colombia was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for pursuing a deal to end 52 years of
conflict with a leftist rebel group, the longest-running war in the Americas,
just five days after Colombians rejected the agreement in a shocking referendum
result.
The decision to give the prize
to the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, may revive hopes for the
agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, with whom
the country has been waging the last major
guerrilla struggle in Latin America.
Mr. Santos said he was told of
the Nobel committee’s decision by his son Martín, who woke him before dawn on
Friday. The winner dedicated the prize to his fellow Colombians, especially the
victims of the long conflict, and called on the opponents of the peace deal to
join him in securing an end to hostilities.
“I invite everyone to join our
strength, our minds and our hearts in this great national endeavor so that we
can win the most important prize of all: peace in Colombia,” he said alongside
his wife during his first public appearance since the Nobel announcement.
Colombian voters threw out the
peace deal just days after the government had invited world leaders to a
celebratory signing ceremony, leaving fate of the agreement — along with Mr.
Santos’s legacy — in limbo.
Despite the setback, the Norwegian Nobel
Committee recognized Mr. Santos “for his resolute efforts to bring the
country’s more than 50-year-long civil war to an end.”
In announcing the award, Kaci
Kullmann Five, the chairwoman of the committee, commended Mr. Santos for
starting the process, even as she acknowledged that the people of Colombia had
rejected the outcome.
She said she hoped that
awarding the prize to Mr. Santos would act as a spur for a future agreement.
“The committee hopes that the peace prize will give him strength to succeed in
this demanding task,” she said. “Further, it is the committee’s hope that in
the years to come, the Colombian people will reap the fruits of the
reconciliation process.”
News of the award stirred
excitement on Friday in Colombia, where Mr. Santos is the second man from his
country to win a Nobel Prize, after novelist Gabriel García Márquez, who won the literature
prize in 1982. Even some who had opposed Mr. Santos in the peace deal
offered him well wishes, though they quickly spun the news to their own ends.
“I congratulate President
Santos for the Nobel,” said Álvaro Uribe, Mr. Santos’s predecessor as
president, who led the campaign against the deal. “I want him to lead to change
these peace accords that are damaging to democracy.”
Others saw the prize as a blow
to opponents like Mr. Uribe. “It’s a call to all those who have, through
deception, wanted to throw this process to the ground — that they stop this and
that they join this national reconciliation,” said Ivan Cépeda, a senator who
was involved in the negotiations.
The prize appeared to breathe
life into hopes among supporters that a deal could yet be clinched. “This has
given us a boost to push us to keep working for peace,” Silvia Berrocal, the
leader of a group backing the deal, said on a radio station Friday morning.
The committee members, whose
deliberations are conducted in strict secrecy, have a reputation for surprises,
and this year was no exception. While Mr. Santos had been mentioned as a
possibility, to many the leading candidate was the White Helmets volunteer
search-and-rescue group in Syria. On Friday, its proponents expressed their
disappointment on Twitter, even as the group itself sent a note
of congratulations to Mr. Santos.
A United States-trained
economist from a wealthy family in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, Mr. Santos
rose to power as the defense minister under Mr. Uribe. In that capacity, he
organized an intense counterinsurgency campaign that diminished the FARC and
wiped out many of its commanders.
As president, Mr. Santos
staked his legacy on ending the war. The peace accord, announced in August, was
the culmination of four years of negotiations in
Havana, as the Colombian government and the rebels worked their way through a
series of impasses.
It outlined a timetable for
the rebels to abandon their arms and set out a pathway for former fighters to re-enter civilian life — and, in some cases,
run for office. The war has claimed about 220,000 lives and displaced more than
five million people.
The peace talks brought back
old scars, from kidnappings, to the rape of women in rebel camps, to decades of
drug trafficking as the FARC muscled its way into the cocaine trade. Mr. Santos
resisted calls for tough prison sentences for the FARC, saying that would push
them away from the table and back to the war.
The first signs of resistance
to the accord emerged this spring, when Mr. Uribe mounted rallies against it
and portrayed the president as a “traitor” willing to excuse the FARC’s crimes
just to get a deal. Apparently, many Colombians agreed, although they were
unwilling to admit as much to pollsters, who had predicted the referendum would
win by a wide margin. In the end, it failed narrowly, with 50.2 percent voting
against it.
In an interview last month, Mr. Santos
said he had struck the right balance in the agreement. “We need to achieve the
maximum justice possible, but that would allow us peace,” he said. “I think we
struck that equilibrium.”
But he acknowledged lingering
concerns about the deal. “Making peace is much more difficult than making war
because you need to change sentiments of people, people who have suffered, to
try to persuade them to forgive,” he said.
This week Mr. Santos searched
for ways to save the pact, meeting with Mr. Uribe and other opponents. Experts
say the two sides may either seek quick changes to the agreement — probably
including jail time for some rebel leaders — or engage in a protracted
renegotiation. Mr. Santos has warned that a cease-fire with the rebels will
expire on Oct. 31.
Asked why the committee had
not extended the award to other parties to the negotiation, notably the FARC
commander in chief, Timoleón Jiménez, Ms. Kullmann Five said the committee
never commented on those who did not receive the award.
But she said that there “are
strong reasons to put a light on the president himself,” and that “his role as
president” and “the keeper of the process” had been instrumental is securing a
deal.
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