Colombia leader wins Nobel prize despite ‘No’ vote
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COLOMBIAN President Juan Manuel Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday for his efforts to end Latin America’s longest-running conflict.
The honor came just five days after Colombian voters dealt him a stunning blow by rejecting a peace deal with left-wing rebels.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Santos for his attempts to stop a civil war that has killed more than 200,000 Colombians and displaced millions since the 1960s.
In a departure from its tradition of honoring both sides of a peace process, the five-member committee conspicuously left out Santos’ counterpart, rebel leader Rodrigo Londono, from the honor.
Santos, 65, dedicated the peace prize to the Colombian people. “Especially the millions of victims that have suffered in this war that we are on the verge of ending,” Santos said. “We are very, very close. We just need to push a bit further to persevere.”
Santos and Londono — leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known by its Spanish acronym FARC — signed a peace deal last month to end the conflict after more than four years of negotiations in Cuba.
Last Sunday, Colombian voters rejected it by the narrowest of margins — less than a half percentage point — over concerns that the rebels, who were behind scores of atrocities, were getting a sweetheart deal.
Under the accord, rebels who turned over their weapons and confessed their crimes would be spared jail and the group would be given 10 seats in congress through 2026 to help its transition to a political movement.
“The referendum was not a vote for or against peace,” the Nobel committee said yesterday, insisting the peace process wasn’t dead. “What the ‘No’ side rejected was not the desire for peace, but a specific peace agreement.”
Committee secretary Olav Njoelstad said there was “broad consensus” on picking Santos as this year’s laureate.
Londono reacted to the award by saying “the only prize to which we aspire” is one of social justice for Colombia, without far-right militias or retaliation. He later congratulated Santos, as well as Cuba, Norway, Venezuela and Chile, which helped to facilitate the talks.
Santos’ conservative archrival Alvaro Uribe, who led the “No” campaign against the peace deal, also congratulated the president on the prize. “I hope it leads to a change in the accords that are damaging for our democracy.”
Colombians widely credit Uribe for forcing the rebels to the negotiating table by leading a United States-backed military offensive that pushed them to the edge of the jungle during his 2002-2010 presidency.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called this year’s Nobel Peace Prize a “timely message” to all people working toward national reconciliation.
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