Today we await the decision by the International Court of Justice regarding our application for urgent provisional measures in the case concerning the Arbitral Award of 1899. This application has become necessary because Venezuela is holding what it calls a ‘Consultative Referendum’ on Sunday, 3rd December, asking the population to support Venezuela’s decision to abandon the current ICJ proceedings, and instead “to ‘resolve’ the controversy with [this country] by formally annexing and integrating into Venezuela all of the territory at issue” in the proceedings before the Court. In other words, the whole of the county of Essequibo.
The provisional measures which Guyana has asked for include a request that Venezuela should not proceed with the referendum in its present form and in particular should not include the first, third or fifth questions of the five-question referendum. It should also not encompass any question which trespasses on the legal issues to be determined by the Court including the legal validity of the 1899 Award, sovereignty over the territory between the Essequibo River and the 1899 boundary and the purported creation of the state of ‘Guayana Esequiba’ as well as related measures such as the granting of Venezuelan citizenship and national identity cards.
Guyana has also asked that Venezuela not take actions with a view to exercising sovereignty over any territory which was awarded to British Guiana in 1899, and that it should refrain from any action which might aggravate or extend the dispute before the ICJ or make it more difficult to resolve.
Question 5 on the referendum, in particular, has been properly described by the government here as “nothing less than the annexation of Guyana’s territory, in blatant violation of the most fundamental rules of the UN Charter, the OAS Charter and general international law.”
It is difficult to think of any other example in modern times where a state in Venezuela’s position has held a referendum to secure backing for what is essentially a usurpation of someone else’s territory.
That notwithstanding, it will be interesting to see what the ICJ will say, if only because this must be an entirely new kind of application in terms of its remit dealing with the legal disputes between states. There is no evidence, however, that no matter how the Court rules, the Venezuelan government has any intention of amending let alone abandoning the referendum. It accuses Guyana of trying to stop it altogether, although that does not quite represent what this country has asked, since its application relates to questions one, three and five, not to the whole exercise. What Caracas very noisily has been declaring, however, is that the referendum will go ahead no matter what the ICJ says.
Where Guyana’s request concerning Venezuela not taking actions with a view to exercising sovereignty over any territory awarded to British Guiana in 1899 is concerned, it is already in breach of that if reports in sections of the Venezuelan press, including El Universal, are true. Venezuela had illegally seized Guyana’s half of the island of Ankoko after independence in 1966, and was said to have established a military base there. Now the armed forces of that country have begun the construction of a school, an outpatient clinic and a training field, “in the de facto line of the Republic of Guyana …” on Ankoko. These actions were intended, said the Commander of the National Guard, to “guarantee the integral development and presence of the FANB [Bolivarian Armed Forces], in the Essequibo territory.”
The concern of the border population of this country is whether Venezuela will invade following the referendum, something which even a favourable decision from the ICJ would not in and of itself prevent. It would certainly not be in Caracas’s interest to embark on this form of adventurism, and there are those in the Venezuelan opposition who do not think it likely either, although one commentator remarked as a caveat that one can never be certain what to expect in view of the unscrupulousness of the Maduro regime.
Certainly the Government of Guyana has been doing everything possible to indicate by implication that it might not be Miraflores’ preferred option, with meetings between the leadership of the US Army’s First Security Assistance Brigade and the GDF and a visit by GDF Chief of Staff Omar Khan to the Ministry of Defence in Brazil. It was reported that the purpose of this visit went beyond routine military exchanges, rather focusing on a “strategic discourse aimed at expanding and solidifying relations between the two nations.”
Then there was the Reuters report yesterday attributed to Brazil’s Defence Ministry, that Brazil “has intensified defensive actions” along its northern border as it monitors a territorial controversy between Guyana and Venezuela. The message would seem to be clear, although that has not dissuaded Vice President Delcy Rodriguez from saying, “our army has never crossed borders to invade, massacre or trample any people, but to liberate.” This might all be bluster, of course, but the problem is if Caracas stirs up too much popular feeling and then does nothing, it could conceivably be cornered into taking ill-advised action, if only of a limited kind, which it did not intend.
Despite the funding and large-scale organisation which has gone into mobilising the Venezuelan population to vote ‘yes’ to all five questions in the referendum, there are opposition voices which have cast doubt on both the referendum itself, and the numbers which will be expected. Some small parties associated with the Unitary Platform, or combined opposition, have declared their support for the referendum, while the Platform as a whole has now left it to their supporters whether they vote or not. Some opposition commentators think people should go and vote, but indicate ‘no’ in relation to critical questions, such as that on the ICJ. Others, including significantly President Maduro’s main opponent in any election, María Corina Machado, have come out against participating in the referendum at all. The ban on her participation in the national election next year has not been lifted, but she is very popular, and how much influence she will have on citizens’ willingness to participate remains to be seen.
Yesterday, Fidel Canelón, writing in El Nacional cast doubt on the figure given by the government of three and a half million votes in the mock election on the 19th November. He claimed that despite all the work put in by government agencies, NGOs and the like, the common citizen is not really interested in the issue, and the administration has forced public employees to attend the mobilizations. Along with other opposition writers, he sees the referendum as related to internal politics, and asks “whether the thorny and risky issue of the Essequibo will really be able to become the electoral crutch that raises the popularity of the regime.” His conclusion is that while it may raise Maduro’s profile and “grab [him] a few points” it would not be sufficient for him to recover his “victorious image, not only because Guyana does not represent a real threat to the country nor does it generate the same sensitivity as, for example, Colombia, but because a nationalist campaign of this type will hardly be able to cover up and overcome the enormous discontent of the national majorities …”
Before the Venezuelan populace goes to the polls on Sunday to vote on what is essentially the annexation of our Essequibo, they will have discovered what the ICJ thinks about some of the questions which they will be asked. A favourable decision for Guyana would at least be a moral victory, and would place Venezuela in an invidious position making military action even less likely. Even if, for the sake of argument, the judges declined to make a decision, the rectitude of Guyana’s case would still be solid, and the Venezuelan opposition would still regard the referendum as a stratagem related purely to internal politics. And while it contemplates the options, Miraflores should give up any hope that any of the Essequibians of this country will be seeking citizenship in what one Venezuelan opposition writer called “a failed petro-state.”
