Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Opponents of the peace agreement celebrated as the surprise result was announced

Voters in Colombia have rejected a landmark peace deal with Farc rebels in a shock referendum result, with 50.2% voting against it.

The deal was signed last week by President Juan Manuel Santos and Farc leader Timoleon Jimenez after nearly four years of negotiations.

But it needed to be ratified by Colombians in order to come into force.

Addressing the nation, President Santos said he accepted the result but would continue working to achieve peace.

How did it happen?

Colombians were asked to endorse or reject the peace agreement in a popular vote on Sunday.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Voters were asked to vote "yes" or "no" to the peace agreement signed last week

The "yes" campaign had the backing not just of President Santos but of a wide array of politicians both in Colombia and abroad, including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

But there was also a vocal campaign for a "no" vote, led by former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

Polls conducted ahead of Sunday's vote suggested a comfortable win for the "yes" campaign.

But in a surprise result, 50.2% of voters rejected the agreement compared with 49.8% who voted for it.

The difference with 98.98% of the votes counted was less than 54,000 votes out of almost 13 million ballots.

Turnout was low with fewer than 38% of voters casting their votes.

Who voted how?

Colombia was divided regionally with most of the outlying provinces voting in favour of the agreement and those nearer the capital and inland voting against it.

In Choco, one of the provinces hardest hit by the conflict, 80% of voters backed the deal.

In the town of Bojaya, where at least 119 people were killed when a church was hit by Farc mortar bombs, 96% of residents voted "yes".

Colombia's capital, Bogota, also voted "yes" with 56%.

The province of Vaupes, in the east of the country, also registered strong support for the deal, with 78% voting in favour.

Vaupes has also seen its share of conflict, including the attack on the town of Mitu, which the rebels seized control of in 1998 after taking a large number of police officers hostage. Some of the officers were held hostage by the Farc for 12 years before being freed by the army in 2010.

In the eastern province of Casanare on the other hand, 71.1 % voted against the deal.

It is an area where farmers and landowners have for years been extorted by the Farc and other illegal groups.

In Antioquia, the home state of ex-President Uribe, 62% rejected the deal.

Why did people vote 'no'?

Most of those who voted "no" said they thought the peace agreement was letting the rebels "get away with murder".

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption "No" voters said the agreement was too lenient with the rebels

Under the agreement, special courts would have been created to try crimes committed during the conflict.

Those who confessed to their crimes would have been given more lenient sentences and would have avoided serving any time in conventional prisons.

This, for many Colombians, was one step too far.

They also balked at the government's plan to pay demobilised Farc rebels a monthly stipend and to offer those wanting to start a business financial help.

"No" voters said this amounted to a reward for criminal behaviour while honest citizens were left to struggle financially.

Many also said that they simply did not trust the rebels to keep their promise to lay down arms for good.

They pointed to previous failed peace negotiations when the rebels took advantage of a lull in fighting to regroup and rearm as evidence that the Farc had broken their word before.

Others were unhappy that under the agreement, the Farc would be guaranteed 10 seats in the Colombian Congress in the 2018 and 2022 elections.

They said this would give the newly created party an unfair advantage.

Read more about the deal's most contentious points

What will happen next?

President Santos said that the bilateral ceasefire between government forces and the Farc would remain in place.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption President Juan Manuel Santos: "I am the guarantor of Colombia's stability"

He has told government negotiators to travel to to Cuba to consult Farc leaders on the next move.

President Santos has promised to "continue the search for peace until the last moment of my mandate because that's the way to leave a better country to our children".

"I won't give up," he said.

The Farc leader known as Timochenko also said that the rebels remained committed to securing an end to the conflict.

"The Farc reiterates its disposition to use only words as a weapon to build toward the future," he said after the result.

"Count on us, peace will triumph."

But before the vote, President Santos had told the BBC that there was "no Plan B" for ending the conflict, which has killed an estimated 260,000 people.

He said he would meet all political parties on Monday to discuss the next steps and "open space for dialogue".

Read more: Viewpoint: What next for Colombia after 'no' vote?

What does the 'no' campaign want?

The main proponent of the vote against the agreement was former President Alvaro Uribe.

Image copyright AP Image caption Former President Alvaro Uribe said the deal offered rebels who had committed crimes "impunity"

Following the "no" vote, Mr Uribe insisted that he was not opposed to peace but that he wanted to renegotiate some of the agreement, which he said needed "corrections".

Among the "corrections" he has demanded are, among others:

That those found guilty of crimes be barred from running for public office

That Farc leaders serve time in prison for crimes committed

That the Farc use their illicit gains to pay their victims compensation

That no changes be made to the Colombian constitution

He said he wanted "political pluralism which can't be perceived as a reward for crimes committed, social justice without risk to honest enterprise".

"We want to contribute to a national accord and be heard," he said.

However, it is not clear whether the Farc would agree to the "corrections" Mr Uribe wants or if they would even consider renegotiating the deal which took four years of formal negotiations and two years of secret talks to reach.

What has been the reaction?

One of surprise, as even Mr Uribe, the main backer of the "no" vote, had predicted that the "yes" vote would win.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Supporters of the deal were shocked when the "no" won

Image copyright EPA Image caption Some just could not believe the result

Some of those who had gathered to watch the result on giant screens expressed their disappointment.

One woman in Medellin told Caracol radio: "I never thought I could be this sad. I haven't got any victims in my family, nor any siblings who've joined the guerrilla, but I think of my country, of the young people and my heart breaks into a thousand pieces."

Farc leader Timochenko expressed his disappointment with the result which he blamed on "the destructive power of those who sow hatred and revenge" and "have influenced the Colombian people's opinion".

Opponents of the agreement, however, took to the streets to celebrate their unexpected win.

Many said that "justice has won" and expressed their relief at the result.

One Colombian woman told BBC Mundo that Colombians had not forgotten that the path of the Farc was "paved with kidnappings, killings and drug trafficking".

Did you vote in the referendum? How do you feel about the result? Tell us your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.

You can also contact us in the following ways: </s> BOGOTA, Colombia | A stunning referendum defeat for a peace deal with leftist rebels leaves Colombians with no Plan B to save an accord that sought to bring an end to a half century of hostilities.

Instead of winning by an almost two-to-one margin on Sunday as pre-election polls had predicted, those favoring the accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia lost by a razor-thin margin, 49.8 percent to 50.2 percent for those against the deal.

Both President Juan Manuel Santos and leaders of the FARC, after four years of grueling negotiations, vowed to push ahead, giving no hint they want to resume a war that has already killed 220,000 people and displaced 8 million.

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos prepares to cast his ballot in a referendum to decide whether or not to support the peace deal he signed with rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara) Opposition Senator and former President Alvaro Uribe reads a statement at his house in Rionegro, Colombia, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2016. Colombians rejected a peace deal with leftist rebels by a razor-thin margin in a national referendum. Opposition to the accord, led by Uribe, argued that the government was appeasing the FARC and setting a bad example by sparing rebels jail time if they confess their crimes and guaranteeing the group 10 seats in congress through 2026. Back right is Senator Ivan Duque. (AP Photo/Luis Benavides) Supporters of the peace accord between the Colombian government and rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, follow on a giant screen the results of a referendum to decide whether or not to support the peace accord, in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2016. Colombia's peace deal with leftist rebels was on the verge of collapsing, with those opposing the deal leading by a razor-thin margin with almost all polling stations reporting results. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos) Opponents to the peace deal signed between the Colombian government and rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, celebrate as they listen to the results of the referendum to decide whether or not to support a peace accord to in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2016. The peace deal was expected to end more than 5 decades of conflict between the FARC and the government. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos) A supporters of the peace accord between the Colombian government and rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, follows on a giant screen the results of a referendum to decide whether or not to support the peace deal in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2016. The peace deal is expected to end more than 5 decades of conflict between the FARC and the government. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan) Opponents to the peace deal signed between the Colombian government and rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, celebrate as they listen to the results of the referendum to decide whether or not to support a peace accord to in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2016. A referendum on Colombia's peace deal with leftist rebels was going far worse than expected for the government Sunday, with those favoring the deal leading by a razor-thin margin with more than half the votes counted. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos) Supporters of the peace accord between the Colombian government and rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, follow on a giant screen the results of a referendum to decide whether or not to support the peace accord in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2016. The peace deal is expected to end more than 5 decades of conflict between the FARC and the government. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan)

“I won’t give up. I’ll continue search for peace until the last moment of my mandate,” Santos said in a televised address appealing for calm.

But it’s not clear how the already unpopular Santos can save the deal after the stunning political defeat. He has ordered his negotiators to return to Cuba on Monday to confer with FARC’s top leaders, who watched the results with disbelief after ordering drinks and cigars at Club Havana, once Cuba’s most exclusive beach club.

“The FARC deeply regret that the destructive power of those who sow hatred and revenge have influenced the Colombian people’s opinion,” the FARC’s top commander, a guerrilla known as Timochenko, told reporters.

The loss for the government was even more shocking considering the huge support for the accord among foreign leaders, who have heralded it as a model for a world beset by political violence and terrorism. Many heads of state as well as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry were present when Santos and Timochenko signed the deal less than a week ago in an elaborate, emotion-filled ceremony.

Norway, which along with Cuba co-sponsored the talks, said it would be willing to further facilitate peace talks.

“I am very disappointed, and the result shows a very polarized and split Colombia,” Norway’s Foreign Minister Borge Brende told the NTB news agency.

“We have told both parties that we will be at their disposal and are available,” he said. “We must also involve the opposition who say they want peace and hear what they think might be the solution.”

With the outlook uncertain, all eyes are on Santos’ former boss and chief rival: Alvaro Uribe, the powerful former president who led the grass-roots campaign against the accord. With none of the government’s huge PR machine, an angry Uribe gave voice to millions of Colombians, many of them victims of the FARC like him, who bristled at provisions in the 297-page accord sparing rebels jail time if they confessed their crimes and instead reserved them 10 seats in Congress.

Uribe, in prepared remarks from his ranch outside Medellin after the results were in, called for a “big national pact” and insisted on “correctives” that guarantee respect for the constitution, respect for private enterprise and justice without impunity. But he didn’t specify whether he would join Santos in trying to salvage the deal, and took more swipes at the FARC, demanding it end drug trafficking and extortion.

“The entire accord was full of impunity,” said Ricardo Bernal, 60, celebrating the victory for the “no” side in a Bogota neighborhood where opponents were gathered. “We all want peace but there have to be adjustments made.”

Across town, hundreds of supporters of the peace deal who had gathered in a hotel ballroom for what they expected would be a victory party with Santos wept in despair.

The FARC’s 7,000 guerrilla fighters are unlikely to return to the battlefield any time soon. For now, a cease-fire remains in place.

One option for Santos would be to reopen negotiations, something he had ruled out previously and his chief negotiator said would be “catastrophic.” The president, who has a little under two years left in office, could also seek to bypass another popular vote and ratify the accord in Congress or by calling a constitutional convention, something both the FARC and Uribe have previously favored.

“I’ve always believed in a wise Chinese proverb, to look for opportunities in any situation. And here we have an opportunity that’s opening up, with the new political reality that has demonstrated itself in the referendum,” Santos said Sunday night at the presidential palace.

But bringing Santos and Uribe together might be harder than achieving peace with the FARC. Santos served as Uribe’s defense minister, when they worked together with the U.S. to drive the FARC to the edge of the jungles, but the two haven’t spoken for years and frequently trade insults.

One of the reasons for the surprise defeat was low turnout, with only 37 percent of the electorate bothering to vote, a further sign to some analysts that Colombians’ enthusiasm for the ambitious accord was lacking. Heavy rains from Hurricane Matthew especially dampened voting along the Caribbean coast, where the government’s electoral machinery is strongest and the “yes” vote won by a double-digit margin.

While urban voters who were being leaned on to pay for the peace largely voted against the accord, the areas hardest hit by the conflict overwhelmingly endorsed it. In the town of Bojaya, where a FARC mortar attack on a church killed dozens of civilians in 2002, the ‘yes’ vote won with 96 percent of the vote.

The campaign exposed deep rifts in Colombian society, dividing many families and making clear the road to reconciliation would have been long and torturous even had the accord passed. Colombians overwhelmingly loathe the FARC, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group, and many considered the accord an insult to victims of the long-running conflict.

“In the end, hate toward the FARC won out over hope for the future,” said Jason Marczack, an expert on Latin America at the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

Associated Press writer Michael Weissenstein in Havana contributed to this report, AP Writer Matti Huuhtanen contributed from Helsinki, Finland.

Joshua Goodman is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjoshgoodman. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/joshua-goodman .

Andrea Rodriguez is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ARodriguezAP. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/andrea-rodriguez . </s> BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombian voters have rejected a peace deal with FARC rebels, a surprise outcome that risks prolonging a 52-year-old armed conflict, and in doing so tossed the peace process into chaos.

By a razor margin of 50.25 to 49.75 percent, voters rejected the peace deal, a Brexit-style backlash that few were expecting.

After nearly six years of negotiations, many handshakes and ceremonial signatures, Colombia’s half-century war is not over. Not even close.

Surveys had predicted an easy win for the “yes” vote by a margin of 2 to 1. Instead the result delivers a crushing blow to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who since 2011 has pursued the peace deal with single-minded determination and to the steady detriment of his own popularity. He took an extraordinary risk by insisting that the accord — the product of tedious, grinding negotiations with the FARC– would only be valid if Colombian voters gave their blessing.

They didn’t, and that failure has left Santos politically crippled. The president’s supporters began insisting that FARC leaders and government negotiators re-open the accord, but Santos had repeatedly warned Colombians that no such thing would be possible.

Sunday’s vote was also an extraordinary rejection of the guerrilla commanders of the FARC, who in recent months have tried to engineer a makeover of the rebels’ public image in preparation for an eventual return to politics. The outcome reveals the depths of Colombian public animosity toward the rebels, accumulated by decades of kidnappings, bombing and land seizures in the name of Marxist-Leninist revolution.

Sunday’s vote, for many Colombians, was about far more than a cease-fire with FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Many saw the country’s political and judicial integrity at stake, and the peace accord as a dubious giveaway to the rebels.

“I want peace, but not if it means kneeling down to the guerrillas,” said Bogota resident Piedad Ramos, 60. “Santos has divided and deceived the country.”

Gina Narvaez, 34, voted no because she wants the two sides to “take another look at some of the points of the accord.”

Her brother and her uncle were kidnapped by the FARC in the Huila department in the 1990s. They were freed only after a costly ransom payment.

“They need to change to accord so that there’s some kind of punishment for those who committed these crimes,” she said.

Voter turnout was lower than 40 percent, and heavy rains along Colombia’s Caribbean coast, one of the strongholds of president Santos, may have sapped support for the accord.

No one knows what will happen now with the nearly 5,800 fighters FARC fighters who were preparing to move into U.N.-monitored camps to begin laying down their weapons and start a transition to civilian life. They will presumably remain in their jungle hideouts, and a bilateral cease-fire between the rebels and the government is also now potentially in doubt.

By insisting on a deal that would allow them to avoid prison time in exchange for providing full and honest testimony to their war crimes, FARC’s leaders gambled that such an arrangement would be acceptable to Colombian voters. They were wrong.

The accord is not a surrender for the FARC, and includes other concessions to the rebels, including the guarantee of at least 10 seats in Colombia’s congress through 2026.

Colombians on both sides of the debate saw the significance of their vote Sunday in terms much bigger than the armed conflict itself.

At a base level, it was a clash between the two most powerful figures in Colombian politics: Santos and his arch-nemesis, conservative former president and senator Álvaro Uribe, who led the campaign against the peace deal.

The son of a wealthy Bogota publishing family, Santos is a figure from Colombia’s urban, globalized business elite, for whom the war with FARC has been a kind of anachronistic developmental constraint. They’re hoping the peace deal brings a new wave of foreign investment to Colombia, and increased trade.

Uribe, whose father, a cattle rancher, was killed by the guerrillas, represents the traditional Colombian landowners who bore the burnt of the FARC’s rural terror. They largely financed the paramilitary groups whose counter-insurgency campaign against the guerrillas and Colombian civilians produced the war’s worst violence. And their land disputes with rural farmers were at the origin of the conflict itself.

Now they will have to fight those battles with FARC– or whatever the name of its future political party may be– in the halls of Colombia’s congress.

Sunday’s outcome also amounts to a rare foreign policy win for the United States and the Obama administration, which has backed Santos and pledged to boost U.S. aid to Colombia by nearly 50 percent, to $450 million a year. Washington’s 16-year, $10 billion “Plan Colombia” security assistance package is widely credited with tipping the conflict in the Colombian government’s favor by weakening the FARC militarily and driving the rebels to seek a negotiated solution.

Voting got off to a slow start in the capital, but as the rain cleared voters began streaming into polling stations.

“I voted yes for the future of my children, so they won’t have to live in a country at war,” said Rocío Cano, 41, a schoolteacher. “Fifty years of violence is enough.”

A few voters Sunday who had suffered personally from the war said they were not ready to forgive the FARC– or at least not through an accord like this one.

“We all want peace, and I respect those who vote yes, but I can’t support this agreement,” said Jakelin Rueda, 33. “There’s no real justice in it.”

Rueda said her father was killed by the FARC in 2002 in the small town of Caparrapí north of the capital where she grew up. He was a farmer and community leader who opposed the guerrillas.

A lot of Colombian city-dwellers voted ‘yes” for “idealistic reasons,” Rueda said. “But they have not been affected by the violence directly.”

While FARC leaders did not formally campaign, the rebels made a major last-minute public relations push ahead of the vote. For the first time, rebel commanders have met with the families of victims at the sites of notorious FARC massacres, seeking forgiveness. On Saturday, the guerrillas volunteered to get an early start on disarmament, detonating about 1,400 pounds of explosives and other military ordnance in the presence of observers from the United Nations.

Most important, FARC leaders announced Saturday that they would make a formal declaration of their financial assets to make reparations to victims. The assets will include cash and property in areas of Colombia that the FARC has controlled for decades.

Until now the rebels insisted that they did not have money to contribute to the implementation of the peace accord, despite the widespread view here that FARC has socked away millions from drug-trafficking profits and other illicit sources.

“I want our country to be free,” said Nelson Gonzalez, 42, explaining why he voted to support the accord. Growing up in the Caquetá department of southern Colombia that has been a FARC stronghold for decades, Gonzalez lived in constant fear of guerrilla roadblocks, where motorists faced shakedowns, and the risk of being carjacked or kidnapped. There were places on the map that were simply no-go zones.

“I’d like to be able to travel around my country, at any hour, and not have to be afraid,” he said. “I just want to live in peace.” </s> BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombian voters rejected a peace deal with FARC rebels on Sunday, a surprise outcome that risks prolonging a 52-year-old armed conflict, and in doing so tossed the peace process into chaos.

By a razor margin of 50.25 percent to 49.75 percent, voters rejected the peace deal, a Brexit-style backlash that few were expecting.

After nearly six years of negotiations, many handshakes and ceremonial signatures, Colombia’s half-century war is not over. Not even close.

Surveys had predicted an easy win for the “yes” vote by a margin of 2-1. Instead the result delivers a crushing blow to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who since 2011 has pursued the peace deal with single-minded determination and to the steady detriment of his own popularity.

He took an extraordinary risk by insisting that the accord – the product of tedious, grinding negotiations with the FARC – would be valid only if Colombian voters gave their blessing.

They didn’t, and that failure has left Santos politically crippled. The president’s supporters began insisting that FARC leaders and government negotiators re-open the accord, but Santos had repeatedly warned Colombians that no such thing would be possible.

Sunday’s vote was also an extraordinary rejection of the guerrilla commanders of the FARC, who in recent months have tried to engineer a makeover of the rebels’ image in preparation for an eventual return to politics. The outcome reveals the depths of Colombian public animosity toward the rebels, accumulated by decades of kidnappings, bombings and land seizures in the name of Marxist-Leninist revolution.

Sunday’s vote, for many Colombians, was about far more than a cease-fire with FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Many saw the country’s political and judicial integrity at stake, and the peace accord as a dubious giveaway to the rebels.

“I want peace, but not if it means kneeling down to the guerrillas,” said Bogota resident Piedad Ramos, 60. “Santos has divided and deceived the country.”

Gina Narvaez, 34, voted “no” because she wants the two sides to “take another look at some of the points of the accord.”

Her brother and her uncle were kidnapped by the FARC in the Huila department in the 1990s. They were freed only after a costly ransom payment.

“They need to change to accord so that there’s some kind of punishment for those who committed these crimes,” she said.

Voter turnout was lower than 40 percent, and heavy rains along Colombia’s Caribbean coast, one of the strongholds of president Santos, might have sapped support for the accord.

No one knows what will happen now with the nearly 5,800 fighters FARC fighters who were preparing to move into U.N.-monitored camps to lay down their weapons and start a transition to civilian life. They will presumably remain in their jungle hideouts, and a bilateral cease-fire between the rebels and the government is also now in doubt.

By insisting on a deal that would allow them to avoid prison time in exchange for providing full and honest testimony to their war crimes, FARC’s leaders gambled that such an arrangement would be acceptable to Colombian voters. They were wrong.

The accord is not a surrender for the FARC, and includes other concessions to the rebels, including the guarantee of at least 10 seats in Colombia’s congress through 2026.

Colombians on both sides of the debate saw the significance of their vote in terms much bigger than the armed conflict itself.

At a base level, it was a clash between the two most powerful figures in Colombian politics: Santos and his arch-nemesis, conservative former president and senator Álvaro Uribe, who led the campaign against the peace deal.

The son of a wealthy Bogota publishing family, Santos is a figure from Colombia’s urban, globalized business elite, for whom the war with FARC has been a kind of anachronistic developmental constraint. They were hoping a peace deal would bring a new wave of foreign investment to Colombia, and increased trade.

Uribe, whose father, a cattle rancher, was killed by the guerrillas, represents the traditional Colombian landowners who bore the burnt of the FARC’s rural terror. They largely financed the paramilitary groups whose counterinsurgency campaign against the guerrillas and Colombian civilians produced the war’s worst violence. Their land disputes with farmers were at the origin of the conflict.

While FARC leaders did not formally campaign, the rebels made a major last-minute public relations push ahead of the vote. For the first time, rebel commanders met with the families of victims at the sites of notorious FARC massacres, seeking forgiveness.

Most important, FARC leaders announced Saturday they would make a formal declaration of their financial assets to make reparations to victims. </s> BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombians rejected a peace deal with leftist rebels by a razor-thin margin in a national referendum Sunday, scuttling years of painstaking negotiations and delivering a major setback to President Juan Manuel Santos, who vowed to keep a cease-fire in place and forge ahead with his efforts to end a half-century of war.

With more than 99 percent of polling stations reporting, 50.2 percent of ballots opposed the accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia while 49.8 percent favored it — a difference of less than 57,000 votes out of a total of 13 million. Pre-election polls had predicted the “yes” vote would win by an almost two-to-one margin.

“I won’t give up. I’ll continue search for peace until the last moment of my mandate,” Santos said in a televised address appealing for calm and in which he tried to reassure voters he was in complete control of the situation.

To save the accord, Santos ordered his negotiators to return to Cuba on Monday to consult with FARC leaders who watched the results come in from the communist island. He also promised to listen to opponents in a bid to strengthen the deal, which he said is Colombia’s best chance for ending a conflict that has killed 220,000 people and driven almost 8 million people from their homes.

“I’ve always believed in a wise Chinese proverb to look for opportunities in any situation. And here we have an opportunity that’s opening up, with the new political reality that has demonstrated itself in the referendum,” he said before descending to the steps of the presidential palace to address a small group of supporters waving white flags symbolizing peace.

The shock outcome, comparable to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union in the Brexit vote, opens an uncertain outlook for the peace accord that was signed less than a week ago by Santos and the FARC in a ceremony attended by heads of state, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Opposition to the accord, led by influential former President Alvaro Uribe, argued that the government was appeasing the FARC and setting a bad example that criminal gangs would seize on by sparing rebels jail time if they confess their crimes and guaranteeing the group 10 seats in congress through 2026. If the “no” vote prevailed, Uribe said, the government should return to the negotiating table.

But that is an option that Santos has previously ruled out.

With the government’s ability to govern now in question all eyes have turned to Uribe, who remains the country’s most-popular politician and whose almost decade-long military offensive forced the FARC to the negotiating table. He made no immediate comment on the results but his former vice president, Francisco Santos, the current president’s cousin, rejected claims that Uribe supporters oppose peace.

“What we want is an agreement for all Colombians,” he said.

President Santos served as Uribe’s defense minister but the two haven’t spoken for years, leading many pundits to joke that bringing the two former allies together is harder than achieving peace with the FARC.

Early in the day, FARC leaders, including Timochenko and Ivan Marquez, sat in leather recliners at Club Havana, once Cuba’s most exclusive beach club, watching the referendum results on a flat-screen TV. Initially the atmosphere was festive, with the guerrillas laughing and joking while snacking on cheese-and-olive hors d’oeuvres, smoking cigars and visiting an open bar.

But the mood soured as results began to come in, and the rebel commanders talked in hushed tones on cellphones, conferred quietly and asked journalists to leave the room.

“The FARC deeply regret that the destructive power of those who sow hatred and revenge have influenced the Colombian people’s opinion,” Timochenko told reporters later.

He said the rebel group’s commitment to peace remains intact.

“The FARC reiterates its desire for peace and our willingness to use only words as a weapon for building the future,” he said.

Turnout was low, with only 37 percent of the electorate bothering to vote, a further sign to some analysts that Colombians’ enthusiasm for the ambitious accord was lacking. Heavy rains from hurricane Matthew especially dampened turnout along the Caribbean coast, where the “yes” vote won by a comfortable double-digit margin.

The campaign exposed deep rifts in Colombia’s society, dividing many families and making it clear to even supporters of the accord that the road to reconciliation would have been long and torturous. Colombians overwhelmingly loathe the FARC, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group, and many considered the accord an insult to victims of the long-running conflict.

In the past month, ever since the deal was announced in Cuba after four years of grueling negotiations, the government spent heavily on television ads and staged concerts and peace rallies around the country to get out the vote. It even enrolled the help of U2’s Bono and former Beatle Ringo Starr. And for the first time in an election, it made ballots available in Braille so blind Colombians could vote.

The FARC, however, has made an effort to show its commitment to peace is real. Twice this week leaders of the group traveled to areas hit hard by violence to apologize for massacres committed by their troops and discuss with communities how they can compensate victims. Even ahead of implementation, they voluntarily destroyed in front of United Nations observers 620 kilograms of grenades and light explosives. </s> Colombia’s referendum over a peace accord with Marxist rebels went down to the wire on Sunday, jeopardizing a deal that would end 52 years of war and allow FARC fighters to re-enter society and form a political party.

With results in from 90.66 per cent of voting stations, the “no” vote was marginally ahead at 50.10 per cent, versus 49.89 per cent for “yes,” according to Colombia’s election authority.

That confounded opinion polls that had predicted a comfortable victory for the “yes” camp promoted by President Juan Manuel Santos. He has said his government will go back to war if the deal is rejected.

Read more: Colombia’s undecided: Can all be forgiven after so much pain and loss?

Read more: Colombia’s peace deal with FARC rebels reaps first fragile benefits

In photos: A look at Colombia's long civil war

The vote asked for a simple “yes” or “no” on whether Colombians support the accord signed last Monday by Santos, who has staked his legacy on peace, and the rebel commander known as Timochenko.

“We must end a 52-year war and open the way to peace, a peace that will take us to a better future ... peace is the way to ensure our children and grandchildren have a better country,” Santos said after voting.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, whose numbers were halved to about 7,000 in recent years because of a U.S.-backed military offensive, has agreed to turn in weapons and fight for power at the ballot box instead of with bullets.

After four years of negotiations in Havana, the final agreement was applauded around the world. Recent opinion polls show about two-thirds of voters are likely to ratify it.

Influential former President Alvaro Uribe led the “no” camp, arguing that rebels should pay for crimes in jail and never be given congressional seats. But most Colombians, including some who see the accord as too soft on the FARC, seem convinced an imperfect peace is better than more war.

“This country needs a change and it has to be today,” Fabiel Cruz, 31, an administrator, said after voting yes. “It’s the only chance we have. If it’s not today it will be never.”

Under the accord, the FARC, which began as a peasant revolt in 1964, can compete in the 2018 presidential and legislative elections and will have 10 unelected congressional seats guaranteed through 2026.

It will give up its role in the lucrative illegal drug trade and take part in reforming rural Colombia, most of which is poor and undeveloped.

Details of the FARC’s political platform have not yet been revealed but its Marxist rhetoric goes very much against the beliefs of the largely conservative Colombian population, and most, including Santos, think it will have difficulty finding a political footing.

Colombia’s Senate has 102 members and the House of Representatives has 166, so the FARC’s 10 seats are not enough to sway legislation. But some Colombians are still outraged.

“I voted no. I don’t want to teach my children that everything can be forgiven,” said Alejandro Jaramillo, 35, angered that the rebels will not serve jail time.

“The accord gives a lot of concessions to the guerrillas. They changed their strategy from arms to politics but the goal is still socialism,” said Javier Milanes, 34, a restaurant owner who also voted no.

For decades, the FARC bankrolled the longest-running conflict in the Americas through the illegal drug trade, kidnapping and extortion, spreading a sense of terror that left few Colombians unaffected. The conflict took more than 220,000 lives and displaced millions of people.

Colombians are tired of the bloodshed, which at its worst saw the FARC positioned close to the capital and the state on the verge of collapse. Battles between the guerrillas, paramilitaries, drug gangs and the army raged in the countryside and there were atrocities committed on all sides.

A major concern for Colombians is that the FARC amassed a fortune from the cocaine trade. If the group does not hand over all its assets to victim reparations as promised, it could have a political war chest that arguably puts it at an advantage over other political movements.

If the peace accord is approved on Sunday, Santos likely will turn his focus toward a much-needed tax reform and other measures to compensate for a drop in oil income, as well as possible talks with the smaller ELN rebel group. </s> A demonstrator yells "No to the plebiscite" to protest the government's peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), to be signed later in the day in Cartagena, Colombia, Monday. Colombians will be given the final say on endorsing or rejecting the accord in an Oct. 2 referendum. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos) </s> To widespread dismay, Colombians voted on Sunday to reject an agreement that might have ended Latin America’s longest-running armed conflict—a decades-long insurgency that has taken more than 220,000 lives, displaced more than 10 percent of the country’s people and inflicted enormous economic damage.

The upset underlines the risks of government by referendum—as if further proof of those hazards were needed. The important questions for Colombia now are these: What went wrong, and what happens next?

Many Colombians apparently felt that the deal struck by President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels was too generous to the insurgents. Rather than punishing the widely detested group, the proposed agreement guaranteed it political representation.

Such concessions when conflicts are wound up are always hard to swallow, but are often the lesser evil—as in this case. The alternative to coming to terms with the rebels was not victory, but more years of violence. Colombia’s army has been capturing and killing FARC revolutionaries for half a century, yet the war has ground on. Despite some recent gains, a military end to the conflict was not in sight. Setting aside 10 seats out of 272 in Colombia’s parliament for two terms was an affordable price to pay for peace.

And it’s unclear, in fact, that most Colombians disagree. The turnout for the referendum was low—roughly two-thirds of the electorate stayed home—and the margin of victory for the No side was narrow. Hurricane Matthew didn’t help, depressing turnout in areas that had earlier helped Santos win reelection. Official complacency also played a part: Prereferendum signing ceremonies and hoopla featuring the likes of Bono, Ringo Starr and numerous heads of state may have led Colombians to think their votes didn’t matter.

The result is hard to read for another reason. The underlying politics is complicated—no simple matter of elite opinion clashing against populist anger, or of FARC’s victims on one side against the blithely unaffected on the other. The No voters included wealthy landowners, led by ex-President Alvaro Uribe, whose families and fortunes have suffered in the fighting and whose economic interests were threatened by the agreement’s provisions. At the same time, in some of the areas that had suffered the worst FARC massacres, the rural poor voted overwhelmingly for peace.

The fact remains, an agreement reached after four years of talks, with the widespread support of the international community, is now in limbo. Santos has reached out to leaders of the No campaign and ordered his negotiators back to Cuba, which hosted the talks and helped to broker the deal. For now, the FARC’s leaders have pledged to maintain a cease-fire. There’s hope the agreement can be modified and revived.

If so, the government would be wise to seek a way for the legislature to consider it without another popular vote. With or without another referendum, though, any revised agreement will need to be sold more effectively to a country paying closer attention.

Colombia has many other problems to address, from a burgeoning cocaine trade to a yawning budget deficit. Economic inequality, a forbidding geography, and the vast gap between those who live in the cities and the countryside all cry out for attention. Without a peace agreement, healing those divisions will be not just difficult but impossible. </s> No one wants war anymore, but the referendum rejecting the landmark agreement between the government and the FARC could push Colombia towards a fractious peace

Years of negotiation in Havana, Cuba, brought the government of Colombia to a peace deal with the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). A 52-year civil war tore through this northernmost country of South America, taking at least a quarter of a million lives and displacing over six million people. No one was immune from the violence. Families had someone who had either been killed in the fighting or who wore the colours of the army, the FARC, or the right-wing paramilitaries. “In this house everything is ruin,” wrote the poet María Mercedes Carranza. “In this house we are burned alive.”

On September 26, the government and the FARC rebels signed an agreement based on the negotiations in Havana to end the war. The landmark accord would bring the FARC fighters out of the forest and into the political process. Crimes committed during the war — by all sides — would be forgiven in the name of peace. The government promised to set aside three million hectares to distribute to landless peasants and small landholders. The FARC would receive funds to help it become a political party, and the government promised to reserve seats in the Congress for it.

To ratify this agreement, the government agreed to hold a referendum on October 2. Few expected the turnout to be as low as it was — under 40 per cent, fewer than the percentage that came to the polls in 2014 to elect Colombia’s current President, Juan Manuel Santos — and for the vote to go against the peace agreement. The outcome was very close: 50.23 per cent voted no, and 49.76 per cent voted yes.

Polls showed that the ‘yes’ vote would win easily. The government, the FARC, the Catholic church and most civil society organisations backed the ‘yes’ vote. President Santos said he had bargained for the best deal possible.

The President had been the Defence Minister under the previous President, Álvaro Uribe, and had helped prosecute the war against the FARC and other guerrilla groups. Both Mr. Santos and Mr. Uribe knew about the crimes committed by their military. In 2008, Mr. Uribe dismissed 25 military officers, including three generals, for the assassination of young people who had been recruited in Bogotá’s slums. These officers had been trained at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the troops had been armed under the U.S. programme called Plan Colombia. Hundreds of extrajudicial killings had been admitted by Mr. Santos when he was Defence Minister. Reports emerged that the government had dispossessed, often at the barrel of a gun, mainly Afro-Colombians from the interior in order to facilitate the palm oil sector. This ‘ethnic cleansing’ had become normal from the government’s side.

In the lead-up to the referendum, the FARC leadership travelled across the country to apologise for crimes that their fighters had committed, massacres that they agreed had been unnecessary on political and military grounds. For instance, the FARC commander Ivan Marquez pointed to the 2002 Bojaya massacre of 119 civilians (48 of them children) and offered “an infinite apology”. This was one of many such incidents.

Mr. Uribe, now a Senator, campaigned viciously against the deal. He argued against allowing the FARC impunity for such massacres and mused about dealing a death blow by military means against the guerrilla group. His party and his allies suggested that the peace deal would deliver Colombia to the communists and to those who supported a progressive social agenda, including gay rights.

In Mr. Uribe’s hometown of Medellin, the leader of the ‘no’ campaign was Jhon Jairo Velásquez, the hit man of the late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. These were the kinds of people who canvassed against the deal. It was a dirty campaign, vilifying President Santos for his ‘betrayal’ and calling the FARC “narco-terrorists” who needed to be eliminated. Anger that the deal had been negotiated seemingly without democratic oversight was fodder for some who instinctively would have recoiled against bringing the FARC above ground. Human Rights Watch’s Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco suggested that the deal should be disregarded because it gave immunity to the FARC rebels. This was context that moved the slim majority to vote against the accord.

Colombian activists who supported the deal say that the turnout was low for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most significant reason is the lack of enthusiasm about the peace agreement in the first place. Hurricane Matthew’s rush to the Colombian coastline certainly played a role in dampening turnout on the coast, where the ‘yes’ vote would have been strengthened. Places which had experienced the worst of the war — in the interior of the country — voted heavily for the agreement, while Medellin voted ‘no’. The town of Bojaya voted overwhelmingly (95.76 per cent) for the agreement. They knew what the vote would mean.

When the referendum’s result broke, Mr. Uribe took to the airwaves with a more conciliatory tone. He knew that he had found a seat at the table. No longer was his tone towards the FARC harsh. “We ask that there is no violence,” said the Senator, “that the FARC are protected and that they cease all crime, including drug trafficking and extortion.” It was important for Mr. Uribe to make the point that the vote was not against peace or for war, but that it was for a different kind of peace. He appears statesmanlike, even though his agenda is narrow.

Both President Santos and the FARC signalled quickly that the vote would not lead them back to war. The FARC’s leader Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri, aka Timochenko, said that “peace would triumph”. He pledged that the FARC would “maintain its desire for peace” and would use “words as arms to build the future”. Mr. Santos called for an all-party discussion towards restarting the negotiation.

Mr. Uribe will play an oversize role in the new deliberations. He will seek to get more concessions from the FARC. Fighters of the FARC have been eager for the peace process to come into play. They are exhausted by the fighting and had wanted to return home. The morale of the FARC is low, but that does not mean that it would be willing to concede on questions of prosecution for its leadership and fighters.

Gloom prevails across the country. If the vote had gone the other way, Colombia might have shown the world that even intractable civil wars can come to an end. It would have been a message to Syria and to the Congo, a message of the power of negotiation towards a new civic compact. But this did not come to pass. Even as President Santos and the FARC leadership try to maintain their optimism of a deal, the return of Mr. Uribe suggests that Colombia might turn its back on a real peace.

Vijay Prashad teaches International Studies at Trinity College. He is the Chief Editor of LeftWord Books.
Referendum voters in Colombia narrowly fail to ratify a peace deal between the Government of Colombia and FARC.