|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Member of Parliament (MP), The Hon. Amanza Walton-Desir (AWD), Shadow Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, has called on the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Hugh Todd, to convene an urgent meeting of the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Foreign Relations to brief Members on the developments with regards to the border controversy case before the ICJ.
This, as well as the ongoing Venezuelan migrant crisis, as Walton-Desir stated via press release, are critical issues of the border controversy and the escalating Venezuelan migrant crisis that demand our immediate attention. The Shadow Minister further stated, “These matters have clear implications for our national security, stability, and international relations, and it is, therefore, essential that we address these challenges with the diligence and vigilance that this state of affairs warrants.”
She noted too that “the former Chair of the Committee, Raphael Trotman, convened such a meeting in January 2021, which allowed Members to receive important information and reaffirmed the commitment of both sides of the House to the preservation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Guyana.”
During a press conference In 2022, Walton-Desir indicated that “the PPP/C Administration brought to the National Assembly the Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Bill, which they used their one-seat majority to pass into law as Act No. 9 of 2021. Particularly, this Act introduced into our laws a seemingly harmless provision that the PPP/C Government said was intended to simplify the requirements for obtaining a Guyana Birth Certificate,” she said.
Walton-Desir had warned then that the law provides a means for any person to be registered as a born Guyanese without the need to provide cogent evidence that they were indeed born in Guyana. The shadow minister had indicated that Russia had cited the protection of the lives of Russian citizens in the Donbas as justification for military action against Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Walton-Desir speaking at another press conference in April of 2022 also stated that the Peoples’ National Congress Reform (PNCR) was welcoming of economic refugees, as she indicated that “Our Party wishes to reiterate that despite these deep concerns, we remain committed to the comfortable settlement of these economic migrants in our homeland – as demonstrations of our typical Guyanese hospitality and our full compliance with our international humanitarian obligations to refugees.”
She noted, “Nevertheless, because of the incompetence of the PPP/C administration, the situation is exacerbated and the dangers heightened by the facts of our extremely porous borders, the lax system of immigration and border control, and the inability of the government to determine who is crossing our borders out of real economic necessity.”
This, coupled with the intent to covertly effect tens of thousands of birth registrations, particularly in those far-flung hinterland regions, using an established network of PPP/C-aligned Justices of the Peace, Toshaos, and Notaries Public. She noted then that this danger is compounded by the fact that “the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is engaged in office-based registration and not house-to-house registration, which means that any person in possession of a Guyana Birth Certificate, aged 14 years and above, can present themselves at the relevant GECOM office and must be entered on the National Register of Registrants,” Walton-Desir said.
