Colombia election clears way for peace talks with rebels

After making the controversial decision to open formal peace negotiations with the rebel group that has been waging a war in Colombia for 50 years, President Juan Manuel Santos was re-elected in an narrow runoff over the weekend that many viewed as a national referendum on those peace talks.

Now comes the hard part.

The negotiations between Colombia's government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been ongoing for two years now. Held mostly in Cuba, the two sides have met regularly and slowly come to some basic agreements on how to overhaul land ownership in the country and whether former guerrillas can participate in future governments.

Some of the hardest issues remain, including whether the government can prosecute combatants who have engaged in human rights violations and how to compensate victims of the years of bloodshed.

Ariel Armony, director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Miami, worries that FARC may have been playing along with the negotiations in recent months simply to ensure that Santos was re-elected. After all, they knew his opponent, Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, had vowed to end the peace talks if elected.

"That was a purely strategic decision on the part of the FARC," Armony said Monday. "Now, the FARC could get tougher in their negotiations."

Armony's concerns highlight just how complicated the peace talks have been in Colombia.

On one hand, the talks have infuriated many who think the government should never sit down with a group that has used kidnappings, murders, bombings and other guerrilla tactics to push for changes in the Colombian government — or its outright collapse.

"When you're kidnapping everyone — poor, middle class and rich — and you're extorting them, everyone hates you," said Adam Isacson, a senior analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America.

Others see it as the only way to end what is the longest-running war in Latin America. Since the FARC began negotiating with the government, they have stopped kidnapping people, one of their main sources of income outside of the illegal drug trade.

"For me, this was a vote for the peace process," Armony said. "It's a vote to see if they can finally finish this."

Like any election, there were many issues that were weighing on the minds of voters.

Santos has been in power during a generally prosperous time for the Colombian economy, which saw consistent, steady growth in large part because of its oil, gas and coal industries. The economy grew by 4% in 2009, 6.6% in 2010 and 4.2% in 2012 according to the World Bank, a steady rise for a country long mired in violence from drug cartels and rebel clashes.

The country has stabilized to the point that foreign companies are also feeling more comfortable investing there. From 2011 to 2012, the country saw a $2 billion increase in foreign investment, according to the U.S. State Department.

Nevertheless, Isacson said, that economic picture didn't give Santos a free ride on the economy because so many Colombians are still facing high unemployment and low wages.

"Yeah, the macroeconomic picture is good. Poverty levels are down," Isacson said. "But a big mass of the people who are out of poverty are barely in the middle class. They don't feel that they're out of the woods yet."

There were also the usual concerns over health care, education and income inequality common in elections throughout the region, but Armony and Isacson agreed that the peace talks were most likely the influencing factor in Sunday's election.

Even the U.S. government has endorsed the peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC. Vice President Biden will visit Colombia this week during a Latin American tour to show support.

After Biden leaves and Santos is sworn in for another four-year term, it will come down to the difficult negotiations that dictate whether Santos can finally bring an end to the country's five-decade-long battle. If he did, Armony said, Santos would become the ultimate Colombian statesman and an easy front-runner for the Nobel Peace Prize. But, as the country has learned over those 50 years, the FARC will never go down easily.

"Nobody knows how it's going to end," Armony said.