“1.8 …a climate of utmost trust should be encouraged and the necessary conditions created at all levels for the widest and honest exchange of opinions, both within the Party an in its relations with the workers and the people. This would allow, in a framework of respect and commitment, the expression of ideas and diverse concepts, in a way that disagreements are assumed to be a normal thing.”
Taken from the base document of the First Cuban Communist Party Congress.
On this point I have more questions that opinions. Here are some of them:
Does this climate of utmost trust refer exclusively to the relations that the Communist Party establishes (a) among its militants, (b) in its relations with the workers and the people?
Does the widest and honest exchange of opinions include the political opinions of others or those adverse to the ideology of the Communist Party?
It is understood that this must happen in a framework of respect, but what does a framework of commitment signify?
Can the expression of diverse concepts happen through the mass media?
Will “spontaneous reprisals” be prohibited, such as the repudiation rallies directed against those who express in the streets and in a peaceful way their disagreement with the politics of the Communist Party?
Will official reprisals be ended, such as arbitrary arrests, preventing people from entering public places, home arrests, kidnappings, forced interrogations, denial of permission to leave the country, false accusations and public disgrace with no right to respond, the control of technological and communications media, the confiscation of literature, wiretapping, surveillance, harassment and other oppressive activities practiced daily against those who don’t want to wait to be given permission to be honest?
25 October 2011
