Saving Colombia’s peace

ASK the people a question, and you may not get the answer you expected. That happened to David Cameron with the Brexit referendum, and now it has happened to Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president. In a plebiscite on October 2nd Colombians made fools of the opinion pollsters and voted to reject his government’s peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas by the narrowest of margins—less than 0.5%.For Mr Santos that was an embarrassment. He had lined up an array of international support for the deal. For Colombia it is dangerous. The agreement came after four years of hard talking, and almost certainly represented the best available compromise between peace and justice. FARC leaders who confessed to war crimes would not go to jail, but they would be judged and punished under a strict legal framework.