Fernando Damaso, 15 January 2017 — The year 2017 begins. A year that promises to be complicated and definitive for Cubans. The country, with a 0.9% drop in GDP, is stuck in a prolonged economic, political, social crisis, and the general-president, if he complies with his word to leave the presidency on 24 February 2018, has barely thirteen months and a few days to undertake reforms, that will pull the country out of the same stagnation, accentuated by the 7th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, and the appearance of the “historic leader.” That one, deceased on 25 November 2016, has left him as an inheritance a nation full of accumulated problems.
His actions, since his brother’s illness and under his shadow, have consisted principally of eliminating absurd prohibitions and applying some shallow reforms, without any depth, that will not assure the survival of the country nor its citizens, who have been failed.
The problems accumulated under the rug have abounded. In the economy: there is a need to authorize professionals to work for themselves, to raise salaries to increase production, to resolve the entanglement of the two currencies, and to draft a new investment law that will really act as a stimulus.
In the social sphere: tackle the problem of lack of housing and the deterioration of the existing housing stock, improve public transportation and other services, and eradicate the unhealthy conditions, the galloping social indiscipline and the generalized corruption.
In the political: listen to other opinions in the analysis and solution and existing problems, and intelligently manage the relations with the new government of the United States.
Daunting tasks, no doubt, that need hours of work, of cold and objective evaluation and brave decisions. 2017 cannot be a year of more of the same.
