The newspaper Granma has called the meetings of country’s social sectors, to define what the economic model should be in future, an unprecedented and improbable event in the contemporary world.
The Newspaper is devoted to making us feel that we live on another different planet. It is sometimes hard to understand Cuban socialists’ form of expression. Is it irony or just a joke? I can’t call it ingenuousness.
Who would think to mention the word ‘define’ to characterize the supposed debate of the Economic Guidelines of Socialism for the next five years? One would have to be a demagogue to assert that the proposed policies will be analysed by our political leaders.
It would be naive and exaggerated to declare that 15% of the guidelines will be redefined after debates with the population in a system where planning and state control come first, and where the only economic actor favoured is State.
Let’s look at the Guidelines in their current formulation with an authentic and radically revolutionary intention, as Granma suggests in its propaganda for the VI Communist Party Congress. Let’s take two points of the Guidelines: The concentration of properties in individuals and legal entities will not be allowed; and higher taxes will be levied on higher incomes.
Let’s think about the problem: the island needs an economic recovery and Cubans want changes; for example, a free market and the abolition of the dual currency. Logic says that if the State Sector has a surplus of more than a million of workers who are already being laid off and if, in the new circumstances, they should support themselves in some way, then the State should give advantages and facilities to the new actors who are capable of generating the jobs that many families will depend on.
The Guidelines say nothing about these aspects. On the contrary, they contain obstacles that impede economic development and the social progress of Cubans. If they ask me what results will be obtained, vis-a-vis the public debate, I predict countless judicial processes for tax evasion, for fattening corruption and a flood of confiscations for illicit enrichment.
None of these topics will be on the agenda of the communists leaders for next April, when they plan to celebrate VI Congress. New policies are defined in accordance with the interests of those who lead and control the country.
Cuban society seems to be a vulgar theatrical one-act farce, and the majority of the population, a simple spectator. It is improbable that in any other part of the world the destiny of more than eleven million people would exclusively depend on the will of a few.
Nor will there be, this time, debate or a real discussion, just demagoguery. Everything is already decided.
Translated by: Antek
December 21 2010
