14-03-2019: Latin American Weekly Report

Colombia’s peace accord faces the most serious threat to its survival since being signed in 2016. President Iván Duque issued a partial veto on 10 March of the statutory law regulating the transitional justice system (JEP), the rock upon which the peace accord rests. The law now goes back to congress where its fate is highly uncertain. Duque’s decision played well to his right-wing Centro Democrático (CD) but it lacks a majority in congress to approve the objections he raised. The political opposition (joined by the Fuerza Alternativa Revolucionaria del Común [Farc] and national and international actors) expressed profound concern but it lacks a majority to reject the objections he raised. In the event of an impasse, Duque would win as the entire JEP law would have to be renegotiated. In the meantime, with legal safeguards undermined, demobilised guerrillas could take up arms again.