Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region.
Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades.
The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world.
Photo: AFP
Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000 square kilometer region.
However, there would not be a single polling station in Essequibo. The 21,403 voters of this small electoral constituency in Venezuela actually live in the southeastern state of Bolivar, which borders Guyana and Essequibo. The voting constituency lies outside Essequibo, but the officials would nominally represent the entire region in the Venezuelan government after the election.
Tumeremo, also in Bolivar state, but not part of the new constituency, has been designated a provisional capital.
Guyana has rejected Venezuela’s plans to elect officials for the disputed territory, with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali saying last week that the plans for the weekend vote were being treated as “a threat.”
“We deserve our Essequibo back,” said Zapara, a resident of the Venezuelan town of El Dorado.
As its name suggests, El Dorado is home to gold miners, and the commodity is its most common means of payment in shops. A few campaign posters of the ruling party’s candidate for governor are visible on city walls. Perhaps fittingly, the candidate is a military man: Admiral Neil Villamizar, photographed in the posters in uniform.
“My aspirations are for us to win, for everything to be settled and for us to get our Essequibo back,” said community leader Yarisney Roa, 48.
“Essequibo is 100 percent Venezuelan,” said Jose Tobias Tranquini, a 48-year-old miner.
“They [the Guyanese] want to take over this land and that can’t happen,” he said. “We have to vote, at least I’m going to vote, I don’t know about the others.”
The main Venezuelan opposition has called for a nationwide boycott of the election, rejecting participation 10 months after a presidential poll it says was rigged to give Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro a third term.
The Essequibo territorial dispute is before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, which earlier this month ordered Venezuela to suspend plans to extend its election to the region.
“We encourage the Venezuelan authorities to follow the orders of the ICJ and also to participate fully in the process and to respect the outcome,” Ali said. “We have the full support and assurances of the international community that they will support our sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
However, Caracas has stuck to its claim on the territory, saying a 1966 agreement with the UK — before Guyana was independent — lays the foundation for the dispute to be handled outside the ICJ.
Venezuela’s position is that it has never abandoned its claim to the territory, and that it believes the Essequibo river should be the natural border between the two countries, as it was in 1777 during the Spanish colonial period.
Guyana rejects Venezuela’s position, saying the current border was ratified in 1899 by a Court of Arbitration in Paris.
In El Dorado, there is hope that becoming part of a new Venezuelan state would attract more money and infrastructure investment to a region that has historically been neglected.
“We’re going to become a state and as a result we’re going to have a constitutional endowment to be able to get out of this rural situation,” 68-year-old welder and mechanic Alirio Paez said.
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