Govt to address opposition concerns about preparation for united parliamentary resolution against Venezuela

Last Updated on Tuesday, 31 October 2023, 20:06 by Denis Chabrol

Guyana’s bipartisan parliamentary Foreign Relations Comm

The opposition coalition of A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) on Tuesday expressed concerns about preparation for a unanimous parliamentary resolution on Venezuela’s claim to Guyana’s Essequibo county, prompting government to say it was ready to meet Tuesday night or Wednesday morning and that statistics on the number and location of Venezuelans here would be provided very soon.

Clerk of the National Assembly Sherlock Isaacs on October 27, 2023 informed parliamentarians that the House would be meeting on November 3,2023 at 10 AM “to consider a motion on the Guyana/Venezuela border issue.”

Opposition Chief Whip Christopher Jones said in a letter to Government Chief Whip Gail Teixeira that he was advised that the parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee agreed that they would meet to decide on a date for a sitting of the National Assembly. He told her that up to October 31, they had not met in keeping with an agreement between President Irfaan Ali and Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton when they met on October 24, 2023.

However, Ms Teixeira who is also the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, differed, saying that the two sides had agreed that the National Assembly would hold a meeting “as soon as possible” during the first week of November. “At no point in the meeting was there an agreement that there needed to be an agreed date between the government and opposition before the sitting is called”. Similarly, she said the Foreign Relations Committee agreed that the National Assembly would meet “at the earliest” with no date being set and there was no decision for the two whips to meet to agree to a date.

At the same time, the Government Chief Whip told her opposition counterpart that she was ready to meet him at 7:30 PM Tuesday or 11 AM Wednesday at her office to discuss the date for the extraordinary sitting of the National Assembly.

“Let us show to our people and the world that the Government and Opposition are united on one thing, that we resolutely stand together in defence of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Guyana,” she said in her resp0nse to Mr Jones.

In a separate letter, Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Amanza Walton-Desir told Minister of Foreign Affairs Hugh Todd that he failed to provide the promised statistics on the number and location of Venezuelans in Guyana to the subsequent meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee meeting on October 25, 2023. “Contrary to these agreements, the requested statistics were not provided at the Committee
Meeting. Consequently, the information to inform the debate was not made available to the Opposition,” she said.

Foreign Minister Todd told Demerara Waves Online News that he would ask his staff why they did not provide the figures but he promised to have that done. He flayed the opposition for depending on government and failing to do its work and collect the informati0n from the Immigration Department. “I can get Immigration to supply her with the locations where the population of the migrants is… I’ll get my Frontier Department to send it off first thing in the morning. That won’t be a problem,” he said.

He said official records show that there were just over 22,000 Venezuelan migrants in Guyana. “If they are doing their job, they can get the same information we’re getting. Where you think we’re getting the information from? The same information we have, they can get. They can call Immigration. They want to depend on government to give them everything. They have to work. They’ve been elected too so they have to work for the people too,” the Foreign Minister said.

Ms Walton-Desir said a second draft of the text of the proposed motion from the Parliamentary Opposition has since been shared with the government for its consideration. “To date we have received no feedback. Consequently, there is no Motion that has been agreed to as was discussed and agreed to in the meeting between the President and the Opposition Leader,” she said.

But Foreign Minister Todd assured that there would be an agreement on the motion before it is tabled in the National Assembly. “We would have that and it would not be a motion that would not find favour with their camp,” he said.

The Foreign Minister expressed concern about the public spat over plans for the Extraordinary Sitting of the House, adding that “no one benefits from this in terms of political mileage; this is a national effort in putting Guyana first and foremost.” He appealed to the media to discourage issues like this one to fester.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Tuesday said Guyana has asked that judicial body for the “indication of provisional measures” in the case concerning Arbitral Award of 3 October 1899 (Guyana v. Venezuela), pursuant to Article 41 of the Statute of the Court.

Guyana requests the Court to indicate that Venezuela shall not proceed with the Consultative Referendum planned for 3 December 2023 in its present form and not include in this or any other referendum any question encroaching upon the legal issues to be determined by the Court in its Judgment on the Merits, including but not limited the legal validity and binding effect of the 1899 Award; overeignty over the territory between the Essequibo River, and the boundary established by the 1899 Award and the 1905 Agreement; and the purported creation of the State of ‘Guayana Esequiba’ and any associated measures, including the granting of Venezuelan citizenship and national identity cards.

Further that Venezuela shall not take any actions that are intended to prepare or allow the exercise of sovereignty or de facto control over any territory that was awarded to British Guiana in the 1899 Arbitral Award; and that Venezuela shall refrain from any action which might aggravate or extend the dispute before the Court or make it more difficult to resolve.