Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

A lo­cal Venezue­lan ac­tivist has re­ject­ed yes­ter­day’s ref­er­en­dum in the South Amer­i­can coun­try that could de­ter­mine the fate of Es­se­qui­bo, a con­tentious ter­ri­to­ry in Guyana.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Yese­nia Gon­za­les said the vote, which was con­duct­ed in de­fi­ance against the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice’s re­cent rul­ing, was a dark day in the coun­try’s his­to­ry.

She said, “This thing he (Nico­las Maduro) do­ing to­day is a fraud for the gen­er­al elec­tion that is com­ing up in Oc­to­ber next year, so he try­ing to get as much vote as he can so he could use that, be­cause he knows he can­not go through the elec­tion sys­tem again so there­fore he do­ing this to try and get vote.”

The In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) is­sued a rul­ing on Fri­day, warn­ing Venezuela against tak­ing any ac­tion that can al­ter Guyana’s con­trol over the oil-rich re­gion.

Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties have claimed that the swath of land in their dis­pute with Guyana was stolen when the bor­der was de­ter­mined back in 1899 and that they did not recog­nise the court’s or­der.

Gon­za­les said yes­ter­day’s ref­er­en­dum, which con­tained five ques­tions for na­tion­als, in­clud­ing if they agree with cre­at­ing a new state called Guayana Es­e­qui­ba in the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion and grant­i­ng its pop­u­la­tion Venezue­lan cit­i­zen­ship, placed the re­gion’s pol­i­tics in lim­bo.

Fol­low­ing the ICJ’s rul­ing on the mat­ter, Cari­com stat­ed its po­si­tion, not­ing that it ex­pect­ed Venezuela to up­hold the or­der and in­sist­ed that Venezuela com­ply with in­ter­na­tion­al law.

Mean­while, among the lo­cals to lend their voice on the mat­ter is so­ca star Machel Mon­tano.

In a so­cial me­dia post, Mon­tano shared an im­age of Guyana, ac­com­pa­nied with the cap­tion “Stand­ing with our broth­ers and sis­ters”.