Venezuela’s socialist regime will hold a sham election on Sunday to choose the first governor and local legislators of “Guayana Esequiba,” a purported new state that the ruling socialists intend to carve out in the Essequibo region, which makes up the majority of neighboring Guyana.
The Essequibo is a 61,600-square-mile territory rich in resources mostly inhabited by its indigenous population that Guyana currently administers, and which represents roughly two-thirds of Guyana’s entire territory. Venezuela and Guyana have maintained a territorial dispute for over 120 years over the region with no resolution at press time. The dispute long predates the arrival of the ruling socialists to power in Venezuela in 1999 and Guyana’s existence as an independent nation after it gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1966.
Although the dispute remained relatively dormant for decades, socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro reignited the feud — with open hostilities — after Guyana began signing oil contracts with American company ExxonMobil in the contested region.
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In response to Maduro’s growing threats, Guyana issued a formal request to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ruled in 2023 that it has jurisdiction over the territorial dispute but stressed that any final ruling on the matter was “years away” from being issued. Maduro has repeatedly insisted that neither him nor his socialist regime will recognize any ICJ ruling on the matter.
In accordance with the “results” of a blatantly fraudulent December 2023 referendum, socialist lawmakers passed a law in March 2024 to create the purported “Guayana Esequiba” state, which will allegedly occupy the entirety of the contested territory. The first regional authorities for the purported state will be “democratically elected” on Sunday in that day’s broader state governor and local legislators “election.”
Guyana has fiercely condemned the Maduro regime’s electoral annexation plans. In March, it issued an urgent request to the ICJ to stop the upcoming election. The Maduro regime rejected the ICJ’s ruling that ordered it to stop holding elections for the contested region and said it would continue with its electoral plans regardless.
The Maduro regime’s plans have reportedly caused uncertainty among Guyanese who reside near the border with Venezuela, especially due to Venezuela’s insistence on holding the elections despite ICJ rulings. Guyanese President Irfaan Ali spoke with The Guardian on Friday morning and denounced Venezuela’s plans to administer the contested territory as a “full-frontal assault on Guyana’s sovereignty and territorial integrity that undermines regional peace.”
“The sham elections Venezuela seeks to stage in our territory are not only illegal – they are an act of brazen hostility. This threat is not just aimed at Guyana. It undermines regional peace,” Ali said.
Brigadier Omar Khan, Chief of Guyana’s Defense Staff, warned on Friday that any resident of Guyana that participates in the sham election will charged with treason and other crimes. Khan further warned that Venezuelans living in Guyana who become involved in Sunday’s Elections could also face arrest and deportation.
“If anyone participates or takes any similar action, it will amount to support for a passive coup,” Brig. Gen. Omar Khan told The Associated Press. “Anything along those lines will speak to a violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Khan, in a meeting with leaders of Guyanese indigenous communities who reside alongside the Venezuelan border, urged them to share all information on Venezuela’s sham election plans with the Guyanese military.
“I want you to be vigilant. People are taking videos of what’s happening on the other side. We want to know when to turn left and when to turn right, and we need your support,” Khan said.
The sham election for governor of “Guayana Esequiba” will feature five men on the ballot: Navy Admiral Neil Villamizar representing the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and four other men representing an assortment of “opposition” parties.
The regime’s candidate has called to “strengthen” the presence of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Armed Forces in the contested territory, implement maritime and fluvial patrolling plans to “protect” the region’s economic zone, develop infrastructure under military supervision to guarantee operations, and promote periodic elections to “reaffirm Venezuelan sovereignty.”
Villamizar, who will most certainly “win” the fraudulent election, vowed during a campaign closing event on Thursday that he will work towards “rescuing” the Essequibo and implement dictator Maduro’s “Seven Transformations,” the latest — and allegedly “China-backed” — iteration of the ruling regime’s socialist governance plans for 2025-2031.
“Here we are all united for the homeland and in the great cause of the rescue and recovery of our Guayana Esequiba,” Villamizar said. “We had a beautiful electoral campaign; the candidates were deployed throughout the territory and there we shook hands and embraced each other in the houses.”
Venezuela has historically claimed that the Essequibo region is its sovereign territory since it gained independence from Spain in 1811. In 1899, an arbitration process held in Paris granted control of the contested territory to Guyana at a time when the nation was known as British Guiana. Since then, Venezuela has denounced the 1899 Paris arbitration ruling as fraudulent and, in 1966, Venezuela and the United Kingdom signed an agreement in Geneva, weeks before Guyana gained its independence from British rule, that gave control of the Essequibo to Guyana until a permanent solution to the dispute was found.
It is largely believed that late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez stopped pursuing Venezuela’s territorial dispute claim in the early 2000s at the request of late Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro – at a time when Chávez began consolidating his regime’s ideological influence in the region with programs such as the “oil-for-influence” Petrocaribe initiative. Petrocaribe offered highly subsidized oil to neighboring Caribbean nations, often with little to no interest and extremely flexible decades-long payment plans.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
