Earlier in the day, President Juan Juan Manuel Santos announced the finalization of the half-century conflict between FARC and the government.
"Soon we will hold a foundation congress of a new political party which be surely dubbed the Revolutionary Alternative Force of Colombia. We do not want to break the links with the past, we have been and we will continue to be a revolutionary force," Arango said, referring to the fact the new political party's acronym will remain as FARC.
FARC was formed in 1964 as the military wing of Colombia's Communist Party. The conflict between the FARC and the state’s government claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Attempts by Bogota to negotiate a peace deal successfully ended in 2016, when a peace treaty was signed in November and then ratified by the Colombian government in December.
The disarmament of the FARC began in February and was set to complete by late May. However, on May 30, Colombia’s government announced a 20-day extension of the arms handover deadline under agreement with the United Nations and FARC. On June 26, the UN mission in Colombia said that FARC had handed all individual weapons to comply with arms laydown roadmap.
