No, as long as Pres. Santos and the FARC keep reaching agreement on the Colombian government’s and FARC’s respective essentials and red-line positions. Two of the biggest FARC red-lines are already tackled in the victims’/justice agreement: A) that FARC leaders/members won’t go to jail, even those who have committed grave war crimes, if they confess their crimes, provide truthful full disclosure, and carry out an alternative sentence of community service with restrictions; and B) that FARC leaders and members, even those who confess grave war crimes, would be allowed to hold public office.
But to the FARC, an overall peace accord means nothing if it is not Constitutionally protected by an iron-clad mechanism, and the FARC has insisted since the beginning of the peace talks on a National Constituent Assembly (Constitutional assembly) to ratify an eventual overall peace accord as a third redline, unless the Colombian government can convince the FARC leadership of another protective mechanism as strong as or stronger than an National Constituent Assembly. It doesn’t accept Pres. Santos’ insistence on a new plebiscite formula that Santos pushed through Congress and is now awaiting a Constitutional Court review.
The FARC—seeing that peaceful legal electoral participation is the way to go—has its own time pressures. It is not in the FARC’s own interest to have excessively prolonged negotiations because of the following, among other things:
It could face the downside of a bell curve on a window of opportunity to best enter the Colombian electoral scene. Colombian public opinion could become fed up, and the international community’s interest could decline, if things drag on too long. Indefinite limbo could result in issues of morale edginess and atrophy among FARC troops. A new Colombian president could be worse for the FARC. Pres. Obama’s successor may not put as much interest and resources in the Colombia peace process, and US bipartisan support on the Colombian peace process could perhaps eventually fissure. And given that Raul and Fidel Castro want to be alive to tout as a crowning achievement of the Cuban Revolution being hosts to a successful peace negotiation putting an end to over five decades of Colombian conflict between the Colombian government and FARC, they don’t want that things drag on indefinitely.
The FARC’s “Timochenko” says that an overall peace agreement can be signed during the Santos administration, if there is the will, and the FARC says that it is trying its best to be as efficient and expeditious as it responsibly can. But if an overall peace accord to FARC satisfaction cannot be obtained by the end of the Santos presidency, the FARC feels that it would have no choice but to take its chances with a new president
The bottom line, which FARC leaders have repeated to me, is that no deal is better than a bad deal (from their standpoint), and that rushing can be a recipe for carelessness, lapses, faultiness, flaws and disaster. One has to remember that if Pres. Santos and his peace team do a bad deal, they would suffer perhaps only a political cost and public opprobrium. But if the FARC does a bad deal (from its standpoint), not safeguarding “full-proof” its own interests as well as not doing what is good for Colombia and its people—particularly for the FARC’s own base and audience—then FARC leaders could eventually find themselves jailed and extradited through unintended, overlooked, unforeseen loopholes/interpretations (from their perspective), or could even be killed.
So, that and the FARC’s desire to get the best possible political, social, economic and judicial considerations/benefits in its incorporation into society are reasons why the FARC insists on “taking the necessary time” to do things in a careful, well-done, solid way.