Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Venezuela’s act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez and her gov­ern­ment has again made it clear that the will con­tin­ue to de­fend its claim to own­er­ship of the dis­put­ed Es­se­qui­bo re­gion in Guyana.

“We will soon be at the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice in the com­ing days to reaf­firm our his­toric po­si­tion, which is in­ter­na­tion­al law and re­spect for the Gene­va Agree­ment. It is out­ra­geous when Venezuela is at­tacked, and that is why we are un­der­tak­ing this en­tire process of spir­i­tu­al re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion for the good of our na­tion,” she stat­ed at an an­ti-sanc­tions ral­ly at the Mu­nic­i­pal The­atre of Va­len­cia in the Venezue­lan state of Carabobo on Tues­day.

She added: “You know that the pres­i­dent of Guyana is now caus­ing a scan­dal be­cause I al­ways wear the pin with the map of Venezuela. The on­ly map I’ve ever known. Now they’re even both­ered by how I dress.”

Her state­ment was in re­ac­tion to the Guyana gov­ern­ment’s com­plaint to Caribbean lead­ers on Tues­day that Ro­driguez wore a con­tro­ver­sial pin, de­pict­ing the map of Guyana’s west­ern re­gion that Venezuela has long claimed as its own,dur­ing of­fi­cial vis­its to Bar­ba­dos and Grena­da.

The pin is in the shape of Guyana’s re­sources-rich Es­se­qui­bo re­gion that makes up two-thirds of its ter­ri­to­ry, which is at the heart of a cen­turies-old ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute with Venezuela, which neigh­bours Guyana to west.

In a note to Cari­com chair­man Ter­rance Drew, who is al­so the Prime Min­is­ter of St Kitts and Nevis, Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali said the pin as­serts “Venezuela’s claim to Guyana’s ter­ri­to­ry.”

Pres­i­dent of Venezuela’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly Jorge Ro­dríguez al­so de­fend­ed Venezuela’s claims. In a post on X yes­ter­day, he wrote: “We main­tain an in­con­tro­vert­ible po­si­tion on our Guayana Es­e­qui­ba. It is a his­tor­i­cal, le­gal, and moral right; it be­longs to all Venezue­lan women and men. Our re­sponse re­mains one of peace diplo­ma­cy, but with the firm­ness of a peo­ple that does not re­nounce its sov­er­eign­ty.”

Venezue­lan For­eign Min­is­ter Yván Gil al­so added his voice, say­ing that Venezuela’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al sov­er­eign­ty can­not be erased with let­ters or with what he called the “im­pro­vised shows” of Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali re­gard­ing the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion.

In a state­ment, the Venezue­lan For­eign Min­is­ter de­scribed as “un­prece­dent­ed” Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali’s at­tempt to ques­tion even the cloth­ing of oth­er heads of state.

“The gar­ment that ob­sess­es him to­day is noth­ing more than the ex­pres­sion of a his­tor­i­cal truth, strong­ly val­i­dat­ed since the 1966 Gene­va Agree­ment,” stat­ed the Venezue­lan diplo­mat, who in­di­cat­ed that Guyana ‘s stance re­flects a “des­per­ate tone” and an “er­rat­ic ma­noeu­vre” to evade re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) is sched­uled to be­gin oral hear­ings on May 4 re­gard­ing the Es­se­qui­bo dis­pute, a bor­der re­gion ad­min­is­tered by George­town and claimed by Cara­cas. Guyana brought the case be­fore the ICJ in 2018, seek­ing con­fir­ma­tion of the le­gal va­lid­i­ty of the 1899 Ar­bi­tral Award, which es­tab­lish­es the bor­der be­tween the two coun­tries.