Posted on 03/12/2013 7:17:54 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
STANLEY, Falkland Islands – An overwhelming 99.8 percent of Falkland Islands voters have backed keeping their government just the way it is: a British Overseas Territory.
Of the 1,517 valid votes cast, only 3 islanders voted "no" to the question: "Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?" One vote was somehow lost, officials said Monday.
The referendum was aimed at showing the world that the residents' self-determination must be considered in any discussion about the future of the remote South Atlantic islands that are claimed by both Britain and Argentina. Elections officials reported a 92 percent turnout among the approximately 1,650 Falkland Islands voters eligible to cast ballots in the referendum. International election observer Juan Henao said the process was completely normal.
The islands' 2,563 residents did all they could ahead of the vote to show their sympathies, waving Union Jack flags and dressing up in red-white-and-blue.
"The referendum will show the world how we feel, that we are British and that we wish to remain British. We don't want to have nothing to do with Argentina, at all," islander Barry Nielson said as he voted.
The ballot didn't consider any alternatives, such as full independence or some sort of political relationship with Argentina. The Falkland Islands Government had said that if a majority said "no," they could explore alternatives in a second vote later.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
MORE NEWS: Argentina Rejects Validity Of Malvinas Plebiscite
See here:
Lol! And the three that voted against it, were put in a leaky rowboat by the other 1,514 and pushed in the general direction of Argentina.
MORE HERE:
http://www.cityam.com/article/argentina-using-falklands-cover-economic-failures
Argentina is using Falklands to cover economic failures
EXCERPT:
ARGENTINA’s foreign minister Hector Timerman recently declared that the Falklands Islands would be Argentinian “within 20 years”. A referendum, held today, is asking the Islanders to choose between that vision, and their current status. It looks unlikely that the Falklands will side with Timerman.
But there is more than belligerent nationalism to the statements coming from Buenos Aires. The government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is using the Falklands as a smokescreen to deflect attention away from more fundamental problems – destruction caused by reckless economic mismanagement, and the worsening isolation of the country from the international community.
Only a decade ago, Argentina was invited into the elite G20 club. Today, the country is fast becoming the world’s worst financial and legal outlaw. Last month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) took the significant step of censuring Argentina for its publication of misleading government statistics. This is first time in the Fund’s history that a country has been censured – a damning indictment of Argentina’s departure from accepted standards.
Its government, while condemning the IMF, said it would withdraw from the World Bank’s investment dispute tribunal, the ICSID. Argentina has over £40bn of cases filed against it due to a record of property expropriation, a refusal to honour contracts, and an unwillingness to respect court judgements. The latest claim hails from Repsol, the Spanish energy company nationalised by Kirchner last year. If Argentina leaves ICSID, the next Repsol will not benefit from such protection. Worryingly, Britain remains the sixth-largest investor in Argentina, and could be left exposed.
These problems all stem from Argentina’s ongoing refusal to repay its debt obligations. Since its default in 2001, it has ignored more than 100 court decisions to make good on its debt, despite having the ability to pay. Recently, an exasperated US judge said that Argentina must abide by contractual commitments and pay its creditors. Argentina’s rejection has caused concern for the precedent it may set for future sovereign defaults.
This concern has led to the US, Germany, France and Spain voting against loans to Argentina from international lending bodies. If Kirchner will not abide by the rules of the community, she scarcely deserves to profit from its generosity. The UK has now joined those countries by declaring it will also vote against loans to Argentina. This is a welcome shift from its previous stance of abstention.
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The crap Argentina pulled when they occupied the islands more or less guaranteed that. It would be sort of like asking South Koreans to vote in 1976 as to whether they would like to be reunited with Japan.
RE: asking South Koreans to vote in 1976 as to whether they would like to be reunited with Japan.
How about reuniting with their Korean brothers in the North? :)
That’s a good question, if South Koreans had to choose between being taken over by Japan, or by North Korea, which would they pick?
It may cost them their lives
Argentina is stupid. If they really want the Falklands that bad they’d send over about 3,000 people to colonize it, and then demand another referendum.
Not sure about this ... but do Argentinians need to have visas to go to the Falklands?
I think they take Master Card as well.
So much so that thousands of Koreans took advantage of the chaos after World War II to smuggle themselves into Japan. It was then the Koreans who claimed systematic discrimination and insisted on setting up a separate Korean school system in Japan.
Even today, about one third of ethnic Koreans in Japan claim sympathies with the north and then whine about systematic discrimination because the Japanese authorities keep an eye on them. Some even claim it is the Japanese who exclude them from the Japanese public school system.
Most of the remaining two-thirds have integrated fairly well into Japanese society, though many still opt to send their kids to Korean schools to preserve their language and culture.
There is no law preventing any legal foreign residents from sending their kids to Japanese public schools. Our own children all attended. They have an interesting system of pairing kids with someone whom they think they can help each other. My own daughter (who was born and raised in Japan) had some interesting pairings including a girl who had been born and raised in Texas, where her father had been posted and recently transferred back to Japan. They became good friends as my girl helped the Japanese girl with her Japanese and the Japanese girl taught my daughter to speak English with a Texas accent.
This is partially about the oil, and partially an effort for Kirchner to divert attention from the economic disaster she has created.
One problem with that idea: the Falkland Islanders are not going to embrace colonization by a foreign population the way the multiculturalists in our government do.
True, but repression looks bad.
Which is why Kosovo is no longer Serbian territory.
In other words, it was ok for Argentina to take the islands from Spain, but it was not ok for the UK to take them from Argentina, right?
Sadly, I don't believe she is well enough to make the journey, but just imagine if Lady Thatcher were to travel to the Falklands, and speak to the people. What an event.
There is one thing that she just might be feisty enough to do, though; that is request that she be buried there.. which would make sure that the islands will always be British.
It’s possible the 3 don’t want to be part of the UK or Argentina, I wouldn’t.
Koreans, Chinese, even Russians and all the rest of Far East community won’t give a flying huck on what Japan has become under American occupation. Japanese are fanatical racist bloody monsters for them forever. It is a kind of archetype in that part of the world. Nobody likes Japanese. Japanese reflecting this crap and don’t like themselves too.
RE: It’s possible the 3 don’t want to be part of the UK or Argentina, I wouldn’t.
OK, what kind of passport do they want to have?
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