As Venezuela continues with its acts of provocation against Guyana and moves ahead with plans to elect a Governor for Guyana’s Essequibo on Sunday, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo is urging Guyanese not to panic, and is assuring that Guyana’s sovereignty and territorial integrity will remain intact.

“We have kept our country safe over the years. We have a strong international partnership, we have the ICJ ruling, we have a great case before the ICJ that I have no doubt would reaffirm the validity of the 1899 Award. So, we need to demonstrate that, act maturely, rationally. We can’t be as irrational as he is or panicked as he is. We have to be deliberate in our undertaking,” the Vice President said.

 While Venezuela has rejected the orders of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to refrain from its planned elections for a Governor of the Essequibo, the Government of Guyana said there is no indication that the election would be conducted in Guyana.

Jagdeo said the planned election is another attempt by the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to “deflect” and seek “relevance” as he faces a mountain of US sanctions.

The Vice President said Guyana will not bow, and remains resolute that the ICJ will uphold the validity of the 1899 Arbitral Award.

“Every time this guy acts up, we can’t be self-flagellating. We already know what Maduro is and the deflection. Every time he sends a vessel out there, like the last time he sent a vessel and was trying to meet the president, and the president did not meet with him because it was designed to take him out of his relative isolation. So, when he meets the president with some leaders, he can claim he has some relevance,” Jagdeo said.

Jagdeo said the Maduro Administration has resorted to spreading propaganda because citizens of Venezuela have not bought into its spurious claims that the Essequibo belongs to Venezuela.

He said on the other hand, Guyanese do not need convincing, since all of Guyana knows the Essequibo belongs to Guyana.

“We don’t need to convince our people that Essequibo belongs to us, every child knows that, we are in control of it. We fly down to the border in Mabaruma and Port Kaituma and all of that. So, I hear a lot of this from the Opposition, oh we are not doing this campaign and Venezuela is doing that campaign. They need that campaign because their own people don’t believe it,” he said.

On Wednesday, President Irfaan Ali said Guyana will continue to pursue the case at the ICJ even as it strengthens its security defense with the support of the international community.

The US is among countries providing support to Guyana. It’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has warned Venezuela that any attack on Guyana would mark a very bad day for Venezuela.

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