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A referendum on the status of the Falklands Islands (Las Malvinas in Spanish) carried out among the South Atlantic archipelago’s 2,900 inhabitants found 99.8 per cent support for remaining a UK overseas territory, rather than becoming part of Argentina.
The ownership of the tiny islands, located around 310 miles off the south-east coast of Argentina, has long been disputed by the two nations and triggered the Falklands War between Britain and the South American country in 1982.
Recently, Argentina has become increasingly vocal in its calls for Britain to abandon its rights to the area, which it has controlled for more than 150 years. For The Daily Telegraph’s feature writer Neil Tweedie, –
The result was a vindication for [UK Prime Minister] David Cameron, who backed the referendum as a tangible expression of the islanders’ right to self-determination, and a snub to Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, president of Argentina, who had called it irrelevant and the product of an ‘implanted population’. [...] She has used the issue to distract her countrymen from economic woes that include one of the world’s highest rates of inflation, but the policy appears to have backfired.
However, for The Guardian’s media columnist, Roy Greenslade,, writing ahead of the result, “the referendum still amounts to a rigged ballot.”
Argentina's response, that the referendum is a meaningless publicity stunt, is surely correct (even if one disagrees with the territorial claim by Buenos Aires). And it will be seen that way across the world, including the United States. [...] Perhaps Argentina's best hope lies in persuading 1,700 of its people to emigrate to the islands in the hope of Britain holding another ballot in seven years' time.
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On the Argentinian side, the Buenos Aires’ daily Clarín notes that, “30 years after the war,” the international context has changed –
The conflict is no longer bilateral. It is now regional. [...] A third agent has emerged, and the dispute is no longer limited to London and Buenos Aires. This third agent is the population on the islands, who are acting autonomously from the British government, expressed through its political authority.
On a similar theme, La Nación considers that with this referendum
almost 60 per cent of the voters have defined an identity: islanders from the Falklands [...] Whether they are mistaken or not, islanders believe they rule themselves in all essential matters and that they are, closely linked to community life. And they think that it is better to delegate external relations and defence. They prefer to err that way, and to live that way.
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