Three ballots. That was the entire “No” vote when the Falkland Islands went to the polls in March 2013 and asked residents whether the archipelago should stay a British overseas territory. Turnout was about 92 percent of the 1,672 voters eligible, according to Al Jazeera’s account from Port Stanley.
Election officials announced the result at roughly 22:30 local time on a Tuesday. Islanders planned a party afterward.
London welcomes it, Buenos Aires does not
Prime Minister David Cameron wasted no time. He told Argentina to take “careful note” of the outcome and said the islands “may be thousands of miles away but they are British through and through.” Other countries, he added, should “respect and revere this very, very clear result.”
Argentina refused. Its ambassador in London, Alicia Castro, called the vote “a manoeuvre with no legal value, which has neither been convened nor supervised by the United Nations.” She still drew a line between people and territory: “We respect their way of life, their identity. We respect that they want to continue being British, but the territory they inhabit is not British.”
Foreign Minister Hector Timerman made the same point about the missing UN supervision. Senator Daniel Filmus labelled the referendum a “publicity stunt,” and Senator Anibal Fernandez went further, saying there “will never be self-determination for an implanted population.” Castro also questioned how long the islanders could live cut off from the mainland, noting that London is 8,000 miles away while continental Argentina is 500 kilometers off.
Pressure on the islands
The poll was the first referendum the islanders had ever organized, and it arrived during the 30th anniversary of the 1982 war. That conflict began when Argentina invaded; a British task force removed its troops after a brief but bloody campaign.
By 2013 the government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was leaning on the islands in several ways, as the Peninsula reported: actions at the UN, newspaper advertisements, restrictions on access, and diplomacy that persuaded neighboring South American states to turn away Falklands-flagged vessels and deny them overflight permissions. Her government prepared parliamentary motions to reject the referendum formally and restate its claim to what it calls Las Malvinas.
Islander Kyle Biggs said the lopsided result showed how firmly residents wanted to stay British.
