ON October 7, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Colombian President Juan Miguel Santos the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for “his resolute efforts to bring the country's more than 50-year-long civil war to an end, a war that has cost the lives of at least 220,000 Colombians and displaced close to six million people.”
But the award may be pointless if the peace accord will not be implemented.
In a press release, the Committee recognized the narrow majority that favored the peace accord in a referendum “has created great uncertainty as to the future of Colombia. There is a real danger that the peace process will come to a halt and that civil war will flare up again. This makes it even more important that the parties, headed by President Santos and FARC guerrilla leader Rodrigo Londoño, continue to respect the ceasefire.”
Those opposed to the peace accord believe they know better, demanding changes to the terms especially on allowing rebels to run for public office and making them answer for crimes committed before a special tribunal.
It has taken almost all of the term of President Santos to put together the document that no previous administration had achieved this far, yet was so easily shrugged off by politicians opposed to the government. The consensus among the guerilla fighters is to return to their normal lives pursuing unfulfilled dreams, if not spending time with families without fear of capture. Santos and the FARC leadership are still hopeful that peace will prevail.
Which brings us to the war fought by Filipino communists that started with the establishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines by Jose Maria Sison on Dec. 26, 1968 that coincided with the 75th birthday of Mao Zedong, the Chinese communist leader of the People's Republic of China. Sison and most of his senior comrades have settled comfortably abroad.
Communism as an ideology has struggled with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dismantling of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the rise of capitalism in the People’s Republic of China. Cuba under Raul Castro has realized the futility of the socialist vision of his brother, Fidel Castro, and invited Barack Obama, president of its arch enemy, the United States, for an unprecedented state visit.
Communism, the greatest socio-political-economic experiment of the 20th century, resulted in bloody revolutions and countless deaths, and what outcome of it do we see today? For Vladimir Putin, it is for the revival of the USSR. For the People’s Republic of China, it is the expansion of its influence in Asia and economic clout throughout the world. For North Korea, it is to remain relevant by making nuclear threats.
We must admire the communists, as well as, socialists of the world who have laid down their arms and pursued their agenda within democratic processes. Take a look at South America, most of the states have communist or socialist leaders who have struggled to implement the vision of a proletariat utopia. They have not found this easy, for the people’s revolution is far more difficult to fight in the political arena than it is in the mountains and jungles.