Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Last Sun­day’s ref­er­en­dum in Venezuela, in which there was an ap­prox­i­mate 50 per cent turnout, was a mes­sage from Venezue­lans for their gov­ern­ment to have clar­i­ty in en­gag­ing with Guyana once more in ac­cor­dance with the 1966 Gene­va agree­ment on the is­sue of the Es­se­qui­bo—and it does not mean “war.”

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by of­fi­cials in Venezuela on the next step af­ter the ref­er­en­dum, in which 96 per cent of vot­ers said “yes” to a ques­tion on the sov­er­eign­ty of the oil-rich Es­se­qui­bo, over which Guyana ex­er­cis­es con­trol.

Last Fri­day, the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) ruled that Venezuela re­frain from tak­ing any ac­tion which would mod­i­fy the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion where Guyana ex­er­cis­es such con­trol.

In­for­ma­tion from Venezuela yes­ter­day stat­ed that the ref­er­en­dum gar­nered 10.4 mil­lion votes.

It in­volved five ques­tions on whether Venezue­lans:

• Agreed to re­ject by all means, in ac­cor­dance with the law, the “fraud­u­lent line” im­posed by the 1899 Paris Ar­bi­tral Award, which seeks to dis­pos­sess them of “our Guayana Es­e­qui­ba”?

• Agreed to sup­port the 1966 Gene­va Agree­ment as the on­ly valid le­gal in­stru­ment to reach a prac­ti­cal and sat­is­fac­to­ry so­lu­tion for Venezuela and Guyana, re­gard­ing the dis­pute over the ter­ri­to­ry of the Guayana Es­e­qui­ba?

• Agreed with Venezuela’s his­tor­i­cal po­si­tion of not recog­nis­ing the ju­ris­dic­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice to set­tle the ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute over the area?

• Agreed to op­pose, by all means, in ac­cor­dance with the law, Guyana’s claim to uni­lat­er­al­ly dis­pose of a sea pend­ing de­lim­i­ta­tion, il­le­gal­ly and in vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al law?

• Agreed with the cre­ation of the state of Guayana Es­e­qui­ba and the de­vel­op­ment of an ac­cel­er­at­ed plan for the com­pre­hen­sive care of the cur­rent and fu­ture pop­u­la­tion of that ter­ri­to­ry, in­clud­ing, among oth­ers, the grant­i­ng of Venezue­lan cit­i­zen­ship and iden­ti­ty cards, in ac­cor­dance with the Gene­va Agree­ment and In­ter­na­tion­al Law; thus, in­cor­po­rat­ing said state in the map of the Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry?
The re­sults of the votes all heav­i­ly favoured the pro­pos­als in the queries.

Yes­ter­day, it was point­ed out that since 2015, Guyana had re­frained from ne­go­ti­at­ing with Venezuela in the frame­work of the 1966 Gene­va agree­ment. That was signed by Guyana, Britain and Venezuela.

It was not­ed Venezuela want­ed to go to the ICJ but could not go uni­lat­er­al­ly, but now Guyana has gone to the ICJ uni­lat­er­al­ly.
It was al­so not­ed that Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro had called re­peat­ed­ly for ne­go­ti­a­tions but that did not oc­cur.

There­fore, last Sun­day’s ref­er­en­dum sent a mes­sage not on­ly to Maduro and his gov­ern­ment “from the peo­ple”, but al­so to say “’this ref­er­en­dum is a Venezue­lan po­si­tion and let’s sit down and talk—it’s not about war’.”

Fur­ther sup­port­ing the idea of peace, sources cit­ed a re­cent ad­dress by Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to T&T Ál­varo En­rique Cordero at the Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege, where the le­gal and his­tor­i­cal el­e­ments in­volved in Venezuela’s recla­ma­tion of the Es­se­qui­bo were giv­en.

Cordero had said Venezuela has a his­tor­i­cal tra­di­tion of a peace-mak­ing ap­proach in all in­ter­na­tion­al en­deav­ours and is de­vot­ed to the prin­ci­ple of Bo­li­var­i­an Peace Diplo­ma­cy in for­eign re­la­tions.

Cordero said Venezuela has al­ways pur­sued peace, “and we shall con­tin­ue to do so”.

He had not­ed Venezuela al­ways up­held and pro­pelled the idea of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean as a zone of peace, ever since its procla­ma­tion in 2014.

Cordero had added, “Through­out the years, decades and even cen­turies, in all our en­gage­ments gear­ing to­wards a res­o­lu­tion of the Guayana Es­e­qui­ba dis­pute, we’ve al­ways aimed at main­tain­ing peace in the re­gion. And we’ve been able to ac­com­plish this through both di­a­logue and diplo­ma­cy.”

He had said Venezuela strong­ly sup­ports the 1966 Gene­va Agree­ment as the mech­a­nism to sort out the dif­fer­ences be­tween Venezuela and Guyana and reach so­lu­tions bi­lat­er­al­ly.

He had al­so pro­ject­ed the ref­er­en­dum con­sti­tut­ed a mes­sage to the world that Venezuela was ea­ger to seek di­a­logue ac­cord­ing to es­tab­lished pa­ra­me­ters of in­ter­na­tion­al law, name­ly the Gene­va Agree­ment and the UN Char­ter, as a guar­an­tee of fair­ness and re­gion­al peace.