This Sunday, Venezuelans supported, through a referendum, the annexation of the territory in dispute with Guyana, of almost 160,000 square kilometers.
95.93% of Venezuelans who participated in the non-binding consultation responded affirmatively to the fifth question, in which they were asked whether or not they agreed with annexing the disputed area to the national map and creating a new region there called Guyana Esequiba.
With this result, the Government of Nicolás Maduro has obtained popular support to develop, as the question posed, “an accelerated plan for comprehensive care for the current and future population” of this area, which includes granting citizenship to the 125,000 people who Mostly indigenous communities reside there.
The land in dispute is rich in minerals
Essequibo, in northern South America, is rich in natural and forest resources and is controlled by Guyana. Furthermore, the territorial waters of the disputed area have immense oil wealth.
From 2015 to date, the multinational ExxonMobil and its partners have made 46 discoveries that have raised Guyana's oil reserves to around 11 billion barrels, representing about 0.6% of the world total.
The unexpected findings have made Guyana one of the fastest growing economies in the world and its GDP is expected to grow 25% this year, after having expanded 57.8% in 2022. In addition to mineral resources, Essequibo has important water resources.
Venezuela claims that it was stripped of this territory in 1899 in the Paris Arbitration Award, which it considers null and void when it denounced alleged defects in the procedure in 1962 before the UN.
The other questions of the referendum
In these votes, promoted by Chavismo and a part of the opposition, Venezuelans, 95.94%, also agreed to oppose “by all means” the claim of Guyana, which controls the territory in question. , to “unilaterally dispose” of waters that Caracas considers “to be delimited.”
Likewise, 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.
Furthermore, 98.11% supported, as does the Executive, the Geneva Agreement as the “only valid legal instrument to reach a solution” in this lawsuit, in reference to the document signed in 1966, according to which the parties undertake to find a “satisfactory” outcome for both nations through direct negotiations.
The referendum also achieved that 97.83% rejected, “by all means”, the Paris Arbitration Award, Guyana's legal argument in the dispute and the one that has defined the current borders since 1899, a time in which Caracas did not has controlled the territory under dispute.
The CNE spoke of “10,554,320 votes”, without explaining whether they correspond to the same number of voters or a calculation of five votes per person was carried out, corresponding to the number of questions answered by each participant.