Unity will prevail at Friday’s extraordinary sitting of National Assembly on border controversy

The Guyana Government and the political opposition remain united in a national approach regarding developments surrounding the border controversy with Venezuela, Attorney General Anil Nandlall has said.

On Tuesday, the AG said it was unfortunate that the opposition’s Chief Whip, Christopher Jones and Shadow Minister of Foreign Affairs, Amanza Walton-Desir issued press statements claiming that requested information was not provided ahead of the extraordinary sitting of the National Assembly to discuss the Guyana/Venezuela border controversy.

Additionally, they also argued that the date for the sitting was set without promised talks beforehand.

Nandlall said following a joint meeting led by President Dr. Irfaan Ali, on the government side, and Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton, it was concluded that the sitting would be held.

He said notwithstanding the domestic political developments, the two sides will speak from the National Assembly with one voice on the border controversy and the recent actions taken by Venezuela.

The sitting will be held one month before Venezuela holds a referendum to ask its citizens for the creation of a new state, which makes up the territory of Guyana that it claims.

The discussion on the controversy will take the form of a motion; the details of the motion have not yet been published but the members of the 65-seat legislature have been issued a notice of the sitting which will begin at 10:00 hrs.

The Guyana government has condemned what it sees as Venezuela’s expansionist ambitions and said the border controversy should be resolved in court as the case is before the International Court of Justice as dictated by the United Nations Secretary General as the means to settle the controversy.

Guyana has since approached the International Court of Justice (ICJ), seeking an injunction from the world court to prevent Venezuela from taking action through its provocative referendum over Guyana’s territory – Essequibo.

The borders of Guyana and Venezuela were determined by an arbitral tribunal on October 3rd, 1989, and Venezuela inherited 13,000 square kilometers of Guyana’s territory (then under British rule).

Venezuela was bound under international law to respect that award, which it did for the subsequent six decades. Venezuela, however, at the onset of Guyana’s independence in 1966, resorted to various strategies and challenged the award.

There has been a series of acts of aggression by Presidents of Venezuela against Guyana, starting with a Presidential decree of June 1968 to the time of President Nicolás Maduro Moro’s decree of May 26, 2015, which sought to extend Venezuela’s land claim to also annex the country’s maritime space.

In 2013, Venezuelans sent a naval ship into Guyanese waters and seized a U.S.-chartered oil survey ship and escorted it to Margarita Island. In the same year, a Canadian-based mining company Guyana Goldfields said it had received an notification of possible legal action by Venezuela over its operations in Guyana.

In September 2015, Guyanese authorities also said the Venezuelan army was up the Cuyuni River, in the northwest of the country which borders Venezuela.

An agreement reached in Geneva on February 17, 1966, allowed for the United Nations Secretary-General to determine a resolution to the controversy and dialogue and talks ensued for decades.

In mid-February 2017, the new UN Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Dag Halvor Nylander of Norway as his Personal Representative on the Border Controversy, in a final effort at dialogue to settle the matter. That failed.

On January 31, 2018, the UN Secretary-General referred the matter to the ICJ and Guyana filed its case; the ICJ on April 6 this year ruled that it would go ahead and hear and determine the case.