Pablo Catatumbo: Guerrillas support Peace Agreement
FARC-EP Pablo Catatumbo was chosen for the second time as spokesperson of the Guerrilla Conference underway in the Yari.
He opened the press conference on the third day of Conference stating he didn’t want anyone to be deceived: “The FARC gave a tough fight, – he said – but everyone knows that the government refused to discuss the economic model. What we feel is that now the door is open for people to fight and defend the territories in democratic conditions for such opposition.”
The shortcomings of the agreed document do not go unnoticed in this Conference that brings together more than 230 delegates from the FARC (40 percent of them, women). “It would have been necessary [in the agreements] to have incorporated more elements on mining extraction“ said Catatumbo, yet he believes there is a unique opportunity for Colombians “to solve our problems democratically, after 200 years of conflict and civil war”.
For Catatumbo “the agreements generate some tools [for the democratic framework to be extended] but it is all to be built”. All of this in State that the FARC believes “is in a mess which is why crime is growing everywhere and there are mafias for almost everything.”
Catatumbo, in line with what has been said by guerrillas and other commanders, believes that “paramilitarism is perhaps the greatest threat to the agreements. It is the biggest threat to Colombians for democracy”. He then highlighted all the tools contained in the agreement to try to tackle this violent phenomenon: a great national political agreement “to stop mixing politics and weapons in this country,” as well as special units of the Prosecution and the police, or the overhaul of the legal system, that according to the FARC favors the existence of paramilitarism.
The official Conference’s spokesman has confirmed that on Monday the 51 delegates who spoke in the Conference session have shown their support for the agreement with the government, as already happened in the previous days of the Conference.
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