In Colombia, yesterday’s historic ruling against the last leadership of the now-defunct FARC guerrilla opens the debate about the political future of the Comunes party, which emerged from the signing of the 2016 Peace Accord.
Although the eight-year sentence against the seven members of the guerrilla’s last leadership affects only these individuals and under the lens of restorative penalties — not effective imprisonment in a penitentiary — the party’s future is more uncertain than ever, especially because in 2026 its automatic seats in Congress, derived from the Havana peace deal, will come to an end.
The party’s limited social reach, with scarce electoral support in 2018 and 2022, casts doubt on the continuity of a project that fulfilled the historic demand to secure a political space of its own — something always denied in Colombia, often by violent means.
The future of Colombia’s former FARC party, Comunes, after the JEP ruling
Yesterday, Sept. 16, the transitional justice tribunal of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) issued its historic ruling, sentencing seven members of the Comunes party — who until 2016 formed the last leadership of the now-defunct FARC guerrilla — to eight years.
Presiding Judge Alejandro Ramelli made it clear that the eight-year sentence represents the maximum punishment allowed under this type of restorative justice tribunal, for the crime of kidnapping, which those convicted admitted to having committed against nearly 22,000 people.
Nevertheless, the sentence is precisely focused on repairing the harm caused, in line with the principles of transitional justice that guide JEP. The sanctions therefore include searching for the disappeared, demining, symbolic reparations, and actions for environmental recovery.
The judicial ruling does not prevent political participation, and the two convicted members who are currently serving as lawmakers in Colombia, Julian Gallo and Pablo Catatumbo, will be able to keep their seats until the end of their term in March of next year.
The real challenge for Comunes, the party created after the guerrilla’s demobilization, will come in 2026, when — after two legislatures and a total of eight years — they will lose the automatic seats (five in the Senate and five in the House) granted to them under the Peace Accord.
Weak electoral support casts doubt on Comunes’ continuity
Political analysts in Colombia question the chances of the ex-FARC’s Comunes party to continue as a legally constituted political force, precisely because of the poor electoral results it obtained in recent years.
However, other voices argue that Comunes received few votes precisely because it already had guaranteed seats, and many preferred to support other leftist parties — something that clearly happened in 2022 with the formation of the Historic Pact coalition led by current President Gustavo Petro.
In fact, an analysis of Comunes’ electoral results in 2018 and 2022 shows a clear drop in the second election, right when it was competing with the Historic Pact in that year’s legislative elections, which ultimately gave the left its highest parliamentary representation in Colombia’s history.
In its first electoral participation in 2018, Comunes failed to consolidate significant support in terms of votes. That year, it obtained 52,532 votes for the Senate (0.34%) and 32,636 for the House (0.21%) — numbers far too low to secure representation without the seats guaranteed by the accord.
In the 2022 legislative elections, the results were even more modest: 31,116 votes for the Senate and 21,182 for the House, a 38.5% drop compared to the votes obtained in 2018.
In both elections, its main support came from Bogota, but it fell far short of the threshold not only to achieve parliamentary representation but even to maintain legal party status. In Colombia, electoral law requires 3% of the vote for a party to retain its legal status; otherwise, it loses this category, effectively dooming it to extinction. Today, Comunes is far from reaching that threshold in next year’s elections.
Unitarios: the coalition to preserve its electoral brand
The ex-FARC party decided not to join the creation of the Historic Pact as a unified leftist party — an initiative backed by Colombia Humana, the Democratic Pole, and the Colombian Communist Party. That might have been a legitimate and even laudable way to dissolve, contributing its base to the organization that will soon take over as the current left-wing majority coalition in Congress.
Instead, Comunes’ leadership chose to remain a separate party and join the Unitarios coalition, which brings together small leftist organizations that, despite their proximity to Petro’s government and the Historic Pact, remain outside of it.
Through this structure, Comunes seeks to surpass the 3% vote threshold in March 2026 to stay legally constituted as a party. Today, besides Comunes, Unitarios includes groups such as Todos Somos Colombia, Movimiento Liberales de Base, Movimiento de Integración Democratica, Poder Popular, Partido del Trabajo de Colombia, and Democracia desde Abajo, among other small organizations.
It does not appear to be a strong enough base to achieve the 3%, but Comunes’ leadership has staked its future — its very existence as an organization — on Unitarios. Starting in 2026, they will have to compete against other parties and candidates for representation, without the lifeline of automatic seats provided by the Peace Accord.
Comunes without its own presidential candidate in Colombia
On another front, the Comunes party has never managed to consolidate its own viable presidential candidate. For the 2022 presidential elections, Rodrigo Londoño, former FARC commander-in-chief and current party president, announced his candidacy but had to withdraw shortly thereafter for health reasons.
At that point, their support for Gustavo Petro — who had a clear path to victory and became Colombia’s first left-wing president — could justify the decision not to contest the presidency. But in next year’s race, at least for now, Comunes has no candidate of its own even aspiring to formal candidacy.
Not having a presidential candidate does not legally or electorally prevent Comunes from consolidating as a political force. The Conservative and Liberal parties, with over a century of history, have not had strong presidential candidates since 2002, when Alvaro Uribe broke the tradition — something that remains true to this day — of presidents from one of these two historic parties dating back to the 19th century.
Neither of those parties has fielded a president since then, and yet both retain significant representation in Congress. Of course, their political structures, territorial reach, and resources are not comparable to those of Comunes — often fueled by corruption and vote buying in the regions.
The real challenge for Comunes — the party long sought by the guerrilla, which for decades was denied political space by violence and physical extermination — today lies more in survival than in any real political influence.
The path chosen by its leaders is a bold one: to preserve their own political brand and support a potential progressive majority in Congress from their own seats. But it is also a risky bet in times of deep political polarization, which demand large majorities. Whether or not it is a mistake will be revealed in six months, when Colombia’s legislative elections decide Comunes’ future.