2023-12-04 11:51:56
With this result, the government of President Nicolás Maduro obtained popular support to develop an accelerated plan to fully serve the current and future population of the Essequibo region.
EFE/Miguel Gutiérrez People demonstrate during the end of the referendum campaign for Essequibo, in Caracas (Venezuela)
Venezuelans supported, in a non-binding referendum, the annexation of the territory of I will do it for the Venezuela, according to the first results of the popular consultation held this Sunday, 3, in the country. The region is almost 160 thousand square kilometers, rich in oil and disputed with neighboring Guyana. According to the National Electoral Council (CNE), there were a total of 10,554,320 votes, and 95.93% of Venezuelans who participated in the referendum (the CNE did not report the percentage of abstentions) responded affirmatively to the fifth question, whether they agreed or not with the annexation of this territory and the creation, within it, of a new region called “Guayana Esequiba”. With this result, the president’s government Nicolas Maduro obtained popular support to develop, as the question asked, “an accelerated plan to fully serve the current and future population” of this area, which includes granting citizenship to the 125,000 people who live there, the majority of whom are indigenous communities.
In the vote, promoted by the government and part of the opposition, 95.94% of Venezuelans also agreed to oppose “by all means” the claim of Guyana, which controls the territory in question, to “unilaterally dispose” of the waters that Caracas considers “pending delimitation”. Furthermore, 95.40% of voters supported the idea of “not recognizing the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice” (ICJ) in this 19th century controversy, which has been resolved in that court since 2018. Just like the government, 98.11 % of voters understood the Geneva Agreement as the “only valid legal instrument to reach a solution” in this dispute, in reference to the document signed in 1966, according to which the parties undertake to find a “satisfactory” result for both nations through direct negotiations. The referendum also saw 97.83% reject, “by all means”, the Paris Arbitration Award, Guyana’s legal argument in the dispute and which defined the current borders in 1899.
*With information from EFE
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