Venezuela’s electoral commission announced that Sunday’s referendum on the territorial dispute between Venezuela and Guyana, in which Nicolas Maduro’s government claims control of two-thirds of the neighboring country, has the support of at least 95% of voters.
In a message published “People on social media are asserting that Guyana Esquipa belongs to Venezuela.”
The Venezuelan president said after announcing the result: “Yes to peace, yes to respect for sovereignty, yes to dialogue, yes to our historical struggle, and yes to an independent homeland.”
In response, Guyana’s President, Irfaan Ali, said his country “will not set foot” in Venezuela, and warned that it is “prepared to defend itself.”
“No kind of propaganda or lies will instill fear in my heart or in the hearts of all Guyana,” Ali said in a speech to a crowd at the National Stadium in Providence, ten kilometers from the capital, Georgetown, reported by the Europa Press news agency. an agency.
Meanwhile, the President of Guyana appealed to his citizens to show “compassion and love” to the Venezuelan people, especially towards the citizens who were forced to emigrate due to the difficult financial situation in the country.
In the case it is He controls Above the Essequibo region, which represents about two-thirds of Guyana’s territory, west of the river of the same name. It is an area of 160,000 square kilometers (equivalent to the total area of Tunisia, for example), and is almost entirely occupied by forests, with only a few inhabited sites on the coast.
In 1899, an arbitration court in Paris ruled that the territory belonged to British Guiana, which was then a British colony. In the mid-1960s, Venezuela and the United Kingdom reached an agreement to review the 1899 resolution, but the move never came to fruition due to Guyana’s independence in 1966.
Venezuela’s claims resurfaced in the past decade after the discovery of massive oil reserves off the coast in 2015.
This discovery, which is being explored by the North American oil company ExxonMobil, has made Guyana a very wealthy country. The small local economy is already enjoying the wealth provided by oil exploration: between 2021 and 2022, gross domestic product rose by 63%, according to the World Bank.
Holding the referendum at this time will also be linked to Venezuela’s electoral calendar. Maduro, who is running for election in 2024, is under international pressure to allow the candidacy of the main opposition candidate, Maria Corina Machado, and a rebound in the territorial dispute with Guyana could strengthen Venezuelan patriotism.
It is unclear what Venezuela’s president intends to do with the results of Sunday’s referendum, and any Venezuelan military action would be opposed by the United States, which has already pledged to support Guyana; Moreover, a change in the current situation may prompt the United States to suspend the gradual lifting of sanctions on Venezuela.
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