The rejection of the Colombian peace deal took us all by surprise. It surprised, first of all, those who rejected it, for they had already voiced their conviction that the country was a dictatorship and the referendum was rigged. [...]
The Democratic Center, a rightwing party of ultra-Catholic positions and intolerant manners, has spent the last four years opposing the very possibility that the guerrillas could participate in politics, and quickly corrected the spokesman. The simple truth is they didn’t have a plan B in case they won. The simpler truth is they didn’t even have a plan A. This is not the only similarity between our referendum and the Brexit debacle. [...]
No one has pointed out that what really bothers those of us who supported the peace deal isn’t the defeat – it’s the fact that so many people rejected this chance under the influence of lies and superstition. It is self evident that rejecting the agreements, to many, was the same as rejecting the guerrillas, whose criminal record is a long inventory of pain and suffering, and who were late in assuming their guilt with something resembling humility. But the days to come will have to see a national debate about the weight of lies in our final decision. [...]
One of his most powerful allies is Alejandro Ordóñez, whose CV includes burning copies of One Hundred Years of Solitude in his youth. Ordóñez, who used his considerable power as head of the public ministry to condemn homosexuality and try to ban abortion, got the Colombian people to believe that the peace deals were a secret strategy to impose a “gender-oriented ideology” on the country. He then said that the deals would abolish the Catholic family model; he then accused the government of negotiating his dismissal with the guerrillas. Of course, none of this is remotely true. But people voted with these fears in their minds, and openly said so.
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