MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falklands’ referendum a “parody”: like asking the Argentines “if they want to remain Argentine”

Minister Puricelli said he would have expected something more creative and imaginative from the British

Argentine Defence minister Arturo Puricelli strongly criticized the announced referendum the Falkland Islands government is scheduled to hold next March which he described as a ‘parody’ and “entirely lacking imagination and creativity”.

“If you ask the English if they want to remain English most surely they are going to say yes. I think it is a referendum lacking imagination and creativity, I would have expected more from the English”, said Minister Puricelli during the celebration of the founding anniversary of the Argentine Aircraft Manufacturing in Cordoba.

“I really think that the intelligence of the English should have made them come up with something different and not this parody of a referendum, which undoubtedly will be saying yes. It’s the same if I ask the Argentines if they want to continue as Argentines, almost certainly we will have a 100% win”.  

The referendum on the political status of the Falklands has been announced by the Legislative Assembly for next March. Although the exact date has yet to be determined.

The purpose of the 2013 referendum was announced last June 12 and wants to clearly show the international community that the Falklands population, which has been living for generations in the Islands have the right to self determination and decide who is going to rule them, said MLA Summers quoted in the Buenos Aires press.

“It’s very clear, we want the international community to understand how the Islanders think”, he added.

Regarding the question at the heart of the referendum, “it still has to be formulated but the elected Legislative Assembly is working on that”, and it will be published “as soon as it has been defined”.

MLA Summers interviewed by the Buenos Aires media said the results would be announced the same evening of the vote, since the recount won’t take much time,

Last 12 June, two days before the thirtieth anniversary of Liberation Day, (14, June 1982) when the invading Argentine forces surrendered to the British Task Force, spokesperson for the Legislative Assembly, MLA Gabin Short announced the Falklands were going to hold a referendum on the status of the Islands in 2013. 

“There is no doubt that the people of the Falklands wish for the Islands to remain a self-governing Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom and we certainly have no desire to be ruled by the Government in Buenos Aires, a fact that is immediately obvious to anyone who has visited the Islands and heard our views”, said MLA Short at the time.

However “we are aware that not everyone is able to come to these beautiful Islands and to see this reality for themselves. And the Argentine Government deploys misleading rhetoric that wrongly implies that we have no strong views or even that we are being held hostage by the UK military. This is simply absurd”.

He added that the Falklands want to convey a strong message to the outside world that expresses “the views of the Falklands’ people in a clear, democratic and incontestable way, and so we have decided, with the full support of the British Government, to hold a referendum on the Falkland Islands to eliminate any possible doubt about our wishes”.