Maduro turns up the heat –issues new decree against Guyana
IN a strange turn of events regarding the territorial issue between Guyana and Venezuela, Venezuela’s President NicolÁs Maduro has issued a new decree [Decree 1859], as an amendment to his May 27 decree, which sought to extend Venezuela’s claims to Guyana’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the coasts of Essequibo and Demerara.
Maduro’s position was made clear in his three-hour-plus address to an extraordinary sitting of Venezuela’s National Assembly on Monday, where he denounced the recent statements made by President David Granger at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Heads of Government meeting in Barbados, which ended a few days ago.
In the new decree, the Venezuelan President has enabled the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB in Spanish) to operate in defence of maritime claims to the Counties of Essequibo and Demerara, as claimed in the previous decree. That area includes the Stabroek Bloc, currently being drilled for oil by US oil giant, Exxon Mobil.
The amended decree was as a result of concerns raised by Venezuela’s State Council to the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) on the scope of the decree, where solutions for improving and deepening the decree have been made. The new decree, according to State-sponsored Venezolano de Television [VTV Channel 8 in Venezuela], has provided maritime coordinates of the territorial limits of the country.
President Maduro has also asked for the involvement of the 33-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to mediate between Guyana and Venezuela on the issue. The pro-tempore President of CELAC is Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, and Maduro told the National Assembly that his government will ask Correa to mediate between the two countries in the dispute.
TREATY OF PARIS 1899
In a cunning twist to the saga that has plagued Guyana’s territorial integrity for decades, President Maduro, in his address to the National Assembly on Monday, denounced the 1898 Treaty of Paris, calling it null and void.
The Treaty of Paris was a product of the Spanish-American War waged between the United States of America and Spain from April 1898 to August 1898. That Treaty saw the Spanish Empire losing control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, parts of the Spanish West Indies, the island of Guam, and the Philippines.
President Maduro is relying on an 1822 map of Gran Colombia, a State which included present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, northern Peru, north-west Brazil, and western Guyana [Essequibo] to justify his country’s Essequibo claim.
But that map, which Maduro is referencing, was made ineffective after the independence of some of the countries named previously, again after the Spanish-American War, and later redrawn following the Arbitral Award of 1899 between the United States and the United Kingdom, which demarcated the border between Guyana and Venezuela.
The 1899 Arbitral Award was overlooked by a tribunal comprising judges from the United States, United Kingdom and Russia. Guyana, then British Guiana, was a colony of the United Kingdom, but Venezuela was represented by the United States of America under the Monroe Doctrine.
The Monroe Doctrine was crafted in the early 1800s by US President James Monroe, and sought to reduce the influence of European powers in North, Central, South America and the Caribbean. Under the foreign policy, the US represented the interests of Venezuela at the tribunal, but Venezuela is now claiming that there was no Venezuelan representation on the tribunal.
RECALL AMBASSADOR
Since his address to the Venezuelan Legislature on Monday, Maduro has recalled his Ambassador to Guyana, Reina Arratia Diaz, for consultations, according to the Colombian news agency, El Tiempo. This move follows an order from the Venezuelan Head of State, which could see a reduction of operations at the Venezuelan Embassy in Georgetown, and a revision of relations with Guyana.
Maduro yesterday signed an enabling law for the creation of a Presidential Commission on Institutional Status of Venezuela, which will be tasked with considering all border issues relating to Latin America and the Caribbean.
Maduro told the Venezuelan National Assembly that the Commission will include judges, magistrates, the Office of the Ombudsman, Deputies of State, and a committee of experts from the Armed Forces.
He further requested that the Commission, under the leadership of the country’s Executive Vice-President Jorge Arreaza, and Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez, “be deployed immediately” in an intense move to combat what he termed as “lies that have spread” against Venezuela’s claims to Essequibo.
VENEZUELAN ARMY
Meanwhile, Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez has said, by way of his Twitter account, according to VTV Canal 8, that the country’s Army stands ready and willing to support the position of President Maduro and Venezuela as made in the National Assembly on Monday.
By Derwayne Wills
