Sawt Falasteen - Ex-guerrillas battle low support in Colombia election

Sandra Ramirez, 63, smiles and cuts a friendly figure as she dances, waves flags, and gives speeches canvassing for votes in Bogota.

Just a few years ago she was better known as Griselda Lobo, or Wolf, a left-wing guerrilla leader and partner of the feared Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) founder and top commander Manuel "Sure Shot" Marulanda.

Ramirez has been a Colombian senator since 2018, but has not yet had to win a single vote.

Her party of ex-fighters was granted 10 seats in the Senate and Congress as part of a 2016 peace deal designed to bring ex-combatants into the political mainstream.

Although some dissident guerrilla groups remain active, the deal brought about a transformation for Colombia -- about 13,000 fighters and collaborators demobilized and returned to civilian life.

But on Sunday, the electoral arrangement effectively comes to an end.

After more than half a century of trying and failing to seize power by force, these ex-guerrillas-turned-politicos will live or die by the ballot.

"Scraping for votes has not been easy," Ramirez told AFP on the campaign trail.

The party, Comunes, has garnered less than one percent of the vote in past elections.

Even if another ex-guerrilla, Gustavo Petro, won the presidency in 2022 by leading a broad left-wing coalition, after decades of bloody armed conflict, many Colombians are not ready to forgive and forget.

Ramirez still faces insults from voters who reject her guerrilla past and accuse her of war crimes like recruiting minors.

Her party leader, ex-FARC commander Rodrigo Londonno, "Timochenko," was recently found responsible for more than 21,000 kidnappings.

Ramirez even avoids her own party's logos.

There is still an "irreconcilable tension" between right-wing opponents of the peace deal and candidates like Ramirez, said Rafael Quishpe, a researcher at the University of Giessen.

Comunes will need at least 750,000 of 41 million votes to continue to be recognised as a political party. Even that might be a stretch.

Political violence has darkened this campaign season, which has been the most violent in decades and has seen numerous attacks on candidates.

Presidential frontrunner and right-wing senator Miguel Uribe was assassinated last year while campaigning.

Ramirez's dissident former allies are among the suspects.

But 10 years after the accords and in the face of electoral doom, Ramirez and most demobilized fighters say they remain committed to peace.

Despite the difficulties, the party "will continue," she said, albeit without "giant steps."

"The eight years in Congress were worth it", she said, if only to end the "long night of war."

Z.AlNajjar--SF-PST