The approval of the Colombian peace deal in Sunday’s referendum was expected to be a foregone conclusion. This was supposed to be the most successful attempt at peace in 52 years of armed conflict: four years of intense study and debate had produced a 297-page document outlining a comprehensive proposal for restorative justice that emphasized truth, reconciliation, and reparation, which was renowned as an exemplary model of an integral peace agreement. Polls had predicted an easy win for the “Yes” camp at 66 percent of the votes.

But what the results in fact conveyed was a highly polarized society: at 50.21% to 49.78% — a difference of 54,000 votes — the “no” vote won out. Rather than simply rubber-stamping the deal, the outcome revealed to the world the longstanding crisis of Colombia’s archaic political system, which for decades has served to alienate the majority of the population from mainstream politics. With a turnout of 37 percent, the abstention rate was the highest in 22 years — a sign of indifference of the electorate to four years of intense debates in Havana.

The biggest losers of this outcome are the rural communities at the center stage of the armed conflict. It was these marginalized areas, home to most of the victims of the conflict, that voted overwhelmingly in favor of peace: in Bojayá, Chocó the “yes” vote reached 96 percent, in Caloto, Cauca, 73 percent, in San Vicente del Caguán, Caquetá, 63 percent and in Miraflores, Guaviare, 85 percent. Meanwhile, it was urban centers where far-right groups have their main base of support such as Medellin and Bucaramanga, that provided the strongest force behind the “no” vote. In other words, the further the voter from the epicenters of conflict, the more likely they were to vote against its resolution.

The voting demographics are reflective of the longstanding rural bias in the Colombian conflict. The war has always been fought on the periphery, marginal to the central axes of economic growth and mainstream politics in the cities. Throughout the history of the conflict, the ruling classes preferred to leave the task of fighting the war to a military which enjoyed a significant degree of autonomy, while they took care of more important issues like economic growth and modernization. The referendum results are yet another sign of disregard of the cities for the problems of the countryside.

For its part, the position of the Left was one of critical support. Movements like the Patriotic March and the People’s Congress have always insisted that building “stable and lasting peace” meant addressing the social conflict in rural areas in a much deeper way than was ever included in the peace deal. Their modest hope in supporting the peace accords had been to open up greater democratic space for popular participation in politics. The social base of these groups, which largely originates in marginalized rural areas, nonetheless provided a solid support base for the peace accords.

But the proposals from the Left were absent from the mainstream debate. Instead, the referendum played out in Colombian media and commentary as a competition between two competing sectors of the establishment, “Uribism” and “Santism”. Roughly speaking, the former represented the sectors of the conservative, religious, and paramilitary far-right opposing the accords, and the latter the modernizing, neoliberal elite linked to international capital.

By calling a referendum, President Juan Manuel Santos had hoped to gain a public mandate for the peace accords, demonstrating to the world that Colombian politics was moving out of the battlefield into the democratic sphere. But this illusion failed to take into account the fact that this is a country where electoral politics are inherently exclusionary, dominated by clientelism and corruption. In this context, calling a referendum on the peace deal meant subordinating the hopes and futures of poor rural communities and victims of the conflict to the powerful electoral machinery that is popularly known in Colombia as politiquería (politicking).

On one level, the outcome of the referendum was a direct result of the failure of the elite bloc supporting the deal to put their clientelistic voting machinery into action. The usual charade of providing free lunches and transport to mobilize public opinion through networks of local political bosses never arrived. As one regional congressperson put it, “Santos’ mistake was in thinking he could win on opinion alone. If he had used us, we could have brought out another 20 percent of the votes.” High opinion polls, together with support from the United States and major transnational institutions, had lulled Santos’ “Yes” camp into a state of complacency.

The elite supporters of the “yes” vote had overlooked a number of key factors. Santos is the most unpopular president of recent times, and his allies in the “Yes” camp such as Ernesto Samper and César Gaviria are seen as opportunistic and cynical, bringing them little sympathy among voters. With the slump in commodity prices, Colombia’s resource-based economic growth model is shrouded in uncertainty. Despite strong support from the international community, there was a lack of effort to educate and explain the accords and their consequences to the rest of the country, meaning that the implications and impact of the deal were misunderstood.

In contrast, the far-right Uribistas linked to paramilitary forces and media conglomerates demonstrated a significant campaigning capacity, galvanizing a solid voting bloc opposed to the accords. In a campaign predicated on manipulation, lies, and fear-mongering, they took advantage of public misunderstanding of the peace deal, raising fears about everything from impunity for war crimes to attacks on private property or even a dictatorship of Chavista-Castrista communists in the event of a peace deal. Rather than a question of war or peace, they turned the referendum into a vote on whether or not to support the FARC. They ultimately achieved success because the campaign was better able to mobilize voters to turn out.

Unlike Santos, the Uribistas have an extensive social base throughout the country, a far-right populism led by an extensive network of new paramilitary groups, descendants of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC). In recent months groups such as the self-titled “Autodefensas Gaitanistas” have led armed civic strikes in forty municipalities throughout the North of the country. They now threaten to move into territories formerly occupied by the FARC and reopen the political turmoil of the 1980s and 1990s which saw the extermination of left-wing political movements such as the Patriotic Union.