As ex­pect­ed, in de­fi­ance of the strong views ex­pressed by the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) and the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN), Venezuela went ahead with its ref­er­en­dum on Es­se­qui­bo on Sun­day.

Al­so not sur­pris­ing is its Na­tion­al Elec­toral Coun­cil’s claim that more than 10.5 mil­lion Venezue­lans took part in the ex­er­cise and vot­ed re­sound­ing­ly—by more than 95 per cent—to sup­port the Nicolás Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion’s plan to make that min­er­al-rich re­gion part of its ter­ri­to­ry.

Based on the fig­ures pro­vid­ed by Venezuela’s Na­tion­al Elec­toral Coun­cil, the num­ber of vot­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ref­er­en­dum ex­ceed­ed those who vot­ed for the late Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s very pop­u­lar pre­de­ces­sor, in 2012.

The pre­dictable out­come of this ref­er­en­dum, af­ter the weeks of pos­tur­ing and sabre-rat­tling over the long-dis­put­ed bor­der be­tween Guyana and Venezuela, on­ly adds to the anx­i­ety and un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing this mat­ter.

The prac­ti­cal and le­gal im­pli­ca­tions of the ref­er­en­dum are still un­clear but there are wor­ry­ing im­pli­ca­tions for re­gion­al in­sta­bil­i­ty.

The anx­i­ety over this is­sue through­out the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca has to do with the like­ly use of force that might be in­volved if Venezuela seeks to im­ple­ment the ref­er­en­dum, and those con­cerns have not been eased by re­cent as­sur­ances from the Maduro regime that it is not seek­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to in­vade or an­nex Es­se­qui­bo.

The on and off dis­pute over the 61,600-square-mile Es­se­qui­bo ter­ri­to­ry resur­faced re­cent­ly af­ter the dis­cov­ery of oil and gas in the Stabroek Block. How­ev­er, over the years, Venezuela has of­ten chal­lenged the 1899 de­ci­sion on the bor­der made by ar­bi­tra­tors from Britain, Rus­sia and the Unit­ed States.

For T&T, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause of its ge­o­graph­ic prox­im­i­ty, the im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty will be to sup­port diplo­mat­ic ef­forts to avert a pos­si­ble es­ca­la­tion in­to a larg­er con­flict and to heal the strained diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween Venezuela and Guyana.

Giv­en all that is at stake po­lit­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly, as the Maduro regime press­es on with its claim to two-thirds of Guyana’s ter­ri­to­ry, the best ap­proach for T&T and all oth­er Cari­com mem­ber states, is to main­tain a unit­ed front on this mat­ter.

This is eas­i­er said than done, since in the re­cent past, Cari­com mem­bers have been ex­treme­ly di­vid­ed on crit­i­cal is­sues per­tain­ing to Venezuela.

As re­cent­ly as the 2020 50th Gen­er­al As­sem­bly of the OAS, the re­gion was deeply frac­tured on the is­sue of “free and fair” elec­tions in Venezuela. That was when the Unit­ed States and its al­lies sought to re­move Maduro in favour of then Venezuela op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do.

On that oc­ca­sion, T&T, along with Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Guyana, Grena­da, St Kitts-Nevis and Suri­name, stuck to a stance of non-in­ter­fer­ence and non-in­ter­ven­tion.

How­ev­er, with bor­der ten­sions around the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion es­ca­lat­ing since Sep­tem­ber, when Guyana took bids for sev­er­al off­shore oil ex­plo­ration blocks and the an­nounce­ment of a ma­jor new oil find in Oc­to­ber, this is not a mat­ter on which neigh­bour­ing na­tions can silent­ly stand by.

There must be a unit­ed Cari­com front, with firm sup­port for mea­sures to de-es­ca­late the dis­pute, as well as the clear­ly enun­ci­at­ed po­si­tion of the Caribbean as “a zone of peace and that noth­ing should be done to dis­rupt the tran­quil­i­ty of the re­gion.”

Uni­ty and diplo­ma­cy must now be at the fore­front as the re­gion press­es for a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of this mat­ter.