Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE, in Spanish) has announced that, for the first time, it will hold elections for governors and regional deputies in 24 of the country’s states, on May 25. The surprise lies in the fact that Essequibo, a province that is part of Guyana but has historically been disputed between Venezuelans and Guyanese, will take part in voting for representatives together with Caracas.
The country’s government has announced that 8 deputies will represent Essequibo in the National Assembly. Voters will also choose a governor. The decision to include Essequibo in the vote, however, was not accompanied by details, and several questions were left unanswered.
The first is the number of voters. There is no formal record of Essequibo voters with the CNE since the announcement of the vote in the region was made in April. The area has around 100,000 inhabitants, according to a 2012 census, out of a total of 745,000 voters living in the country. The CNE did not inform how many of these Guyanese are eligible to vote in the coming election.
Another piece of information that has not been disclosed by the government is the electoral zones. With just over 20 days to go until the election, the CNE has not announced how many ballot boxes there will be in Essequibo, the zones or the electoral colleges. The number of towns that will take part in the election has also not been defined by the government, which leads to the main problem following the election: the occupation of the disputed territory.
Essequibo is at the center of an old territorial dispute between Guyana and Venezuela. For the latest to continue with the elections, it will be necessary to occupy a region currently under the control of the Guyanese government.
To hold the election, the government is arguing that a referendum held in Venezuela approved the incorporation of Essequibo as a Venezuelan state. President Nicolás Maduro then promulgated the “Organic Law for the Defense of Guyana Essequiba”, which is intended to formalize the referendum decision to treat the Essequibo territory as a Venezuelan state.
The text determines a transitional period for taking Essequibo until elections are held to choose a governor for the new state. Until then, the territory would be legislated by the Venezuelan National Assembly. The law also stipulates that Venezuela will choose a head of government who will work provisionally in Tumeremo, in the southern Venezuelan state of Bolívar, near the border with the disputed area.
Ricardo De Toma is a researcher in the Society and Borders program at the Federal University of Roraima (UFRR, in Portuguese) and author of the book Os interesses Geopolíticos do Brasil na Guiana Essequiba [Brazilian Geopolitical interests in Guyana Essequiba, in a rough translation]. For him, the measure ends up being more symbolic than practical.
“This move by Caracas is little more than a symbolic act. I don’t see the likelihood that a representative who can apply legal acts, carry out works, take administrative measures and guarantee authority over a territory materializes into an act. To do this, you have to guarantee sovereignty, which means ensuring there is no other sovereign actor. And that’s the conflict taking place today: a dispute between two entities that consider themselves sovereign over the territory,” he told BdF.
