Falkland Islanders vote 98.8% in favour of staying British

UK: Falkland Islanders on Monday voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining a British oversees territory in a referendum designed to send a strong message to Argentina, which earlier derided the poll as illegal.

Some 92 percent of the islands’ 1,672 eligible voters turned out to deliver a 98.8 percent “yes” vote in favour of staying an internally self-governing British territory, election officials in the capital Port Stanley announced.

Only three votes out of 1,517 were cast against the islands remaining British.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague welcomed the result, saying it “demonstrates more clearly than ever the Falkland Islanders’ wish to remain an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom.

“We have always been clear that we believe in the rights of the Falklands people to determine their own futures and to decide on the path they wish to take,” he said in a statement.

“It is only right that, in the twenty-first century, these rights are respected.

Four-fifths of the archipelago’s 2,563 permanent residents live in the town, with its typically British pubs and red telephone boxes.

And for the referendum, homes and shops were festooned with posters and flags, both Britain’s Union Jack and the deep blue Falklands standard, which features both the Union Jack and the islands’ crest -- a sheep, a wooden ship and the motto “Desire the Right”.

-- ‘We remain British’ -- Britain has held the Falklands since 1833 but Buenos Aires maintains that the barren islands are occupied Argentinian territory.

Buenos Aires claims the islanders are an “implanted” colonial population and thus do not have the right to self-determination.

Marlene Short, who runs a diner in Stanley with her husband Richard, moved to the Falklands in 1989.

There were four static polling stations: one in Stanley and one at Goose Green on East Falkland, with two in West Falkland at Port Howard and Fox Bay.

To reach the most remote voters, mobile polling booths were transported around the islands by a five-seater plane and five four-wheel-drive vehicles rumbling along the rough tracks with an observer in the passenger seat and a ballot box in the back.

London, some 13,000 kilometres (8,000 miles) away, says it will not discuss sovereignty issues with Buenos Aires against the islanders’ wishes.

AFP