The news comes after months of sabre-rattling by Argentinian president Cristina Fernández, who has revived Argentina’s claim to the islands, and who is scheduled to present her case to a UN committee tomorrow in New York.
A Falklands government official announced the plans for the referendum at a press conference yesterday in Port Stanley. He spoke alongside UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office minister Jeremy Browne, who was in the Falklands to attend events commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War.
Fernández’s interest in bringing the Falklands – or las Malvinas, as they are known to Argentinians – under Argentina’s flag coincides with interest in the area around the islands on the part of major oil companies, which believe there could be significant oil reserves there.
Only around 3,000 people currently live in the Falklands, which have been a part of Britain since 1833. In 1982, Argentina went to war with the UK over the rocky, windswept , penguin-inhabited archipelago, which resulted in the deaths of more than 900 Argentinian and British troops.
As Brazil-based financial adviser John Fleming, of Global Index International, noted here in April, Fernández may be on shaky ground historically in arguing Argentina’s right to claim the Falklands as its own, but the political support she has received lately from the likes of Brazil and Chile “has put her on terra firma among her constituents”, which is seen as encouraging her to continue pursuing the matter.
‘Wish to remain British’
In an article posted yesterday on the website of the Falklands Islands’ only newspaper, the Penguin News, Gavin Short, a member of the Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly, said he had “no doubt that the people of the Falklands wish for the islands to remain a self-governing overseas territory of the United Kingdom”.
“We certainly have no desire to be ruled by the government of Buenos Aires; a fact that is immediately obvious to anyone who has visited the Islands and heard our views,” he added.
“But we are aware that not everyone is able to come to these beautiful Islands and see the reality for themselves."
Short said the islanders had decided to hold the referendum after giving careful thought “about how to convey a strong message to the outside world that expresses the views of the Falklands people in a clear democratic and incontestable way”.
He said independent international observers would be invited to the island while the referendum was being conducted, in order to ensure that the outcome was fair and democratic.
