The Future of Freedom in Cuba / Yoani Sanchez and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo


Featuring Yoani Sanchez, Dissident blogger, Generation Y; and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Photographer and Editor, Voces; moderated by Ian Vasquez, Director, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, Cato Institute.

Cuba’s Castro dictatorship has clung to power for more than five decades. As the regime ages and the outside sources of finance that buttress it are put in jeopardy, a new generation of Cubans is using the Internet to dissent against the pervasive lack of freedom and opportunity in their country. Prominent Cuban dissident writers Yoani Sanchez and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo — recently given permission to travel outside Cuba — describe life in current-day Cuba, the activities of the island’s dissident community in the face of repression, and the prospects for a free country. They also assess the extent of Raul Castro’s so-called reforms and share their vision of a pluralistic, tolerant society.

Site manager’s note: The link to the video of the entire presentation is no longer working; this is just the Q&A session. We are looking for the other video.

19 March 2013

To Root Out the Remnants / Miriam Celaya

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Yoani Sanchez, MJ Porter in New York City. Photo from Penultimos Dias

Many of my dear readers have written asking for a comment on the long tour of Yoani Sánchez through several countries, and the travel abroad of other figures of internal dissent such as Eliecer Avila, Rosa María Payá, Berta Soler and Orlando Luis Pardo, just to mention some of the best known, and the significance this could have for the opposition on the Island

The topic requires, perhaps, a long essay, but it’s enough to follow the statements of the dissidents mentioned as published in various media, the packed agenda Yoani is covering on her journey, and the links that have been strengthened between Cubans critical of the Castro government on all shores, to understand that there is a before and after with regards to these journeys. The issues raised by all of them range across all the problems of Cuban society today and the crisis of the Castro model.

Rosa María Payá (Another promising young person of the Cuban opposition)

Most significant in this case could be the variety of opinions expressed by them and the fact that, despite differences of nuance, there is a consensus on the need for democratic changes in Cuba and that these must be achieved through peaceful and concerted means. I dare to suggest that, save for some specific remnants of some opponents who feel disenfranchised or who refuse to make way for new ideas and figures which have emerged in the political spectrum of resistance, there are many more who identify with and feel represented in the statements of all these young Cubans who are traveling the world.

Just recently I received a bitter critique from a longstanding opponent who felt diminished in importance because I didn’t mention her in an interview I did with my colleague Pablo Pascuel Mendez which was published in Cubanet in January. She did not understand that the questions put to me by the journalist had nothing to do with her activity, much less did my answers encompass disrespect for any of my fellow travelers from before or now.

The are no pedigrees nor privileges in the Cuban opposition, only fighters for democracy; it doesn’t matter who came before or after, we all matter. At least as I understand it. For that reason I have no problem promoting debates, which I consider essential, because a lack of transparency is nothing more than repeating the patterns of the government we condemn.

I think, in the end, that the words of our compatriots abroad will not only strengthen us by offering a more dignified and truthful picture of what the Cuban opposition is in the light of these times, but will also serve to further understanding and support for us within Cuba, which perhaps would be one of their most important contributions. Yoani, Rosa María, Eliecer and Orlando Luis are offering a magnificent example of the true variety of citizen awareness on the Island. Rooting out the remnants among ourselves would be a chance to feel that in them, somehow, we are all represented.

18 March 2013

Lie to me again, your wickedness makes me happy…

The vision of the demonstrations of mourning of the Venezuelans who just five months ago voted for the president who now stars finally in his own and absurdly long death, arouses both respect and compassion. Respect, for every genuine expression of regret deserves it, beyond our individual ideologies. Compassion, because the crowds of mourners who parade before our eyes in Caracas are behaving like a deceived lover, who although faced with evidence of infidelity insist on denying it.

As announced on Friday, March 1 in his Twitter account, the Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles has revealed that Nicolas Maduro and other Cabinet members lied about the state of health of the president. The irreversibly serious state of the President’s health and his impending death remained hidden in the rigged reports and medical details, murky and full of inconsistencies, designed to maintain political control at all costs and despite the inevitable extinction of the caudillo.

On the other hand, the prolonged absence and invisibility of the President was so scandalous that many sectors of the opposition demanded a proof of life, a factor which had a decisive influence on the public declaration of his death. It was curious that with the growing demonstrations of the opposition and the justice of their demand how suddenly it came about. In just a few days they adjusted the planned program with the extreme seriousness of “the emergence of a new respiratory program” followed almost immediately by the death of Chavez.

Most likely, as has happened in history with the death of other caudillos, we will never know the exact date that the Venezuelan president died. In fact, the serenity of his daughters during the wake suggests a knowledge well before the event, far beyond what they expected as a logical outcome.

But there are other great lies in this saga. Chavez lied maliciously when he declared himself cured by a miracle, after two operations for the same illness, to be eligible for re-election and to take on the electoral campaign that would place him once more in the presidency of Venezuela. He lied with all his energy and at the cost of his own life, to remain in power, proof of enormous irresponsibility, because in the end the voters, without knowing it, voted overwhelmingly for a prospective corpse. If, as some argue, the late caudillo followed directions from Havana, the acceptance of such interference would only prove a major deception to his people.

Overnight the king has been left naked and it is obvious that “the right, the oligarchy, the empire and Chavez’s enemies” were telling the truth. However, tens of thousands of Venezuelans mourn his death. Many times before in history other peoples have mourned their dictators and then quickly forgotten them. The people are fickle, because they need to survive all the passing conflicts. At the end of the day, a good share of the Venezuelan people lie “perhaps in good faith,” when they say they will defend with their lives Chavez-style socialism, a paradigm of 21st century justice.

And so the embalmed corpse of Hugo Chavez, which will have a permanent place in the new Palace of the Revolution will be, along with a twisted and sick perception of worship, a way to keep him among the living, even if it’s all little lies.

For my part, as I’ve watched so many tearful faces cross my TV screen lately, so many slogans and testimonials of loyalty to Chavez, I could not but recall that old bolero that played on the Victrolas so many years ago in the bars my Old Havana: “Who cares, life is a lie … lie to me again, your wickedness makes me happy.”

8 March 2013

My Poor Blog / Mario Lleonart

My first post this year titled “My first post of 2013,” dated January 9, explained to my readers the cause of my tardiness: my lack of internet connection meant that it was nine days into the year before I could post my first text.

Well today is March 26 and I’m posting my fifth post of the year, which is almost equivalent to an average, so far this year, of one post per month.

The truth is that I am not giving in to my lack of connection and so here I am again. I am even trying to take some measures not to achieve a better internet connection, which is impossible, but to take take advantage of the programming options offered by WordPress. So again I apologize to those who have the patience to glance at my poor blog. Thank you for looking here to follow my simple words.

God bless you all.

26 March 2013

The Myth That Prevails / Yoani Sanchez

BGM44FOCMAAszctIt’s cold in the Hague. Through the window I can see a seagull find a piece of a cookie on the sidewalk. In the warmth of a local bar several activists are speaking of their respective realities. From one corner of the table a Mexican journalist explains the risk of exercising the profession of reporter in a reality where words can cost you your life. We all listen in silence, imagining the newsroom shot up, his colleagues kidnapped or killed, the impunity.

Then a colleague from the Sahara speaks up and his words are like sand that gets in your eyes, reddening them until the tears flow. The anecdotes from the North Korean also make me cringe. He was born in a prison camp from which he escaped at age 14. I follow each of these stories, I could live them. From whatever culture and geography, pain is pain anywhere. Within the space of a few minutes we pass from the midst of a shootout between cartels to a tent in the desert and then to the body of a boy behind barbed wire. I manage to put myself in the skin of all of them.

I hold my breath. It’s my turn to speak. I tell about the acts of repudiation, the arbitrary arrests, the assassination of reputations and a nation on rafts crossing the Florida Straits. I tell them of divided families, intolerance, of a country where power is inherited through blood and our children dream of escape. And then come all the phrases I’ve heard hundreds, thousands of times.

I’ve barely said the first words and I already know what is coming: “But you can’t complain, you have the best educational system on the continent”… “Yes, it might be, but you can’t deny that Cuba has confronted the United States for half a century”… “OK, you don’t have freedom, but you have a public health system”… and a long repertoire of stereotypes and false conclusions taken from official propaganda. Communication breaks down, the myth prevails.

A myth fed by five decades of distortion of our national history. A myth that no longer appeals to reason, only to blind belief, a myth that accepts no critics, only fans. A myth that makes it impossible for so many to understand us, to be in tune with our problems. A myth that has managed to make many perceive as good things in our nation that they would never accept in their own. A myth that has broken the channel of ordinary sympathy generated for any human being who is a victim. A myth that traps us more strongly than this totalitarianism under which we live.

The seagull takes a piece of candy in his beak. At the table the talk turns back to North Africa and Mexico. The sense of explaining my Island to them is lost. Why, if the whole world seems to know everything about us, without ever having lived in Cuba. I cringe again on hearing of the harsh lives of these activists, I again put myself in their place. And who puts themselves in ours? Who unravels this myth in which we are trapped?

26 March 2013

Prison Diary V: March Cold / Angel Santiesteban

The Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl, in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”, which featured his experience as a Jew as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, says: “I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, “homeostasis,” i.e., a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

His words definitely define, underpin and summarize my current existence. I live my days answering the call to my conscience, responding to my need to work to achieve a political change in my country that returns hope to Cubans and ends the sacrifice of families seeing their children leave for other lands to look for better conditions.

Later Viktor E. Frankl says: “(…) what matters is not the meaning of life in general terms but rather the specific meaning of every individual’s life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: ’Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?’ What happens is, simply, that there is no such thing as the best move, or a good move, apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one’s opponent. We should not search for the abstract meaning of life, because everyone has within him his own specific or mission to carry out; everyone has a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Thus he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated; everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”

Through reading, my creative writing and my devotion to expressing myself in my blog, my strengths are multiplied.

I am determined to continue, whatever the sacrifice, to achieve our dreams and that they may complete the liberation struggles of the nineteenth century, with  Marti’s ideal as a banner. We can’t forget forget that God keeps all our tears.

We are not far, my nose tells me events predict the change that will finally return to us the meaning of life, with democracy as the only door to a better Cuba.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

La Lima Prison. March 2013

25 March 2013

The Rumor of Being G2, an Imported Harm / Juan Juan Almeida

Under the direction of Yuri Andropov, of the KGB, a totally terrifying maneuver was organized, destined to sow doubt in the eyes of the world to raise questions and stigmatize about the eminent scientist and activist in favor or human rights and civil liberties, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1975.

Against the Russian dissident they created rumors, malicious comments and jokes, and they falsified and published documents about his personal life that seemed credible and invited people to judge him. The entire power of a State against one individual.

Some time has passed since then; but this continues to be the most common of the assassinations of the credibility and decency of the human being.

This sign instituted as state terrorism — a very well-learned skill, with the highest marks, by the “always most humanitarian” revolutionary government — seems to be gaining momentum. It is the modus operandi, that MININT (Ministry of the Interior) converts a name into target practice exaggerating a truth, minimizing realities, distorting points of views, multiplying the doubts and feeding the rumors.

Everyone who distances themselves from the common doctrine, becomes the object of criticism, rejection or ridicule. Be it their cultural level, their manner of dress, of speaking, their skin color, sexual orientation and even manners. The government strives to hide their dissidence and manages to identify them as ugly, liars, dysfunctional or frustrated.

Questionable to proceed; but very well thought out; who has among their aspirations to be poor one day? The idols of the crowd are lovely, powerful, talented, intelligent or rich.

The are multiple ways to discredit a human being. Whoever dissents inside or outside the island, or facing this dictatorship that is committed to not respecting even the most minimal ethical norms, much less legalities, has an adjective foisted on them to undermine their authority and reputation.

The most common and overused way of creating distrust of some critic or opponent is spreading the rumor that “so-and-so works for G2 — Cuban State Security.” Beyond the horror of feeling ashamed when I hear Cubans questioning Cubans, using the same arguments of the dark machinery that, although quite rusted, still manages effectively put a wrench in the gears.  We do not need to echo so much doubt.

It is true that technological development is directly proportional to human freedom; but also the internet has become the perfect tool for the Cuban State to launch “discrediting active measures,” convinced that, pushed by its agents of influence, special collaborators, and those ever less sympathetic, using the uninformed, resentful and/or envious as a breeding ground on the web and social networks.

We need to change old structures, abandon obsessions and with a little effort erase the prejudices that time marks, like a tattoo, in the center of the Cuban genome.

The damage is anthropological; we must overcome it, we have to.

7 March 2013

Prison Diary IV. Cuba: Urgent Legality / Angel Santiesteban

Cubans are guilty until proven otherwise. This is how justice works on the archipelago. If they suspect you they arrest you, then they investigate, and if they don’t find something to prosecute you for they send you to jail anyway for the benefit of the doubt.

Thus defendants swarm in prison without evidence to warrant their being their. People who claim to be innocent but can not always prove it, therefore they will be condemned.

The sentences “by conviction” judges determine by smell and perception; they are the ones who decide whether they are guilty or not.

Also, for decades, through the Heads of Sectors, the names of those who should go to prison are given, because they are considered criminal elements and they could commit crimes, but in fact they are not, perhaps not what they thought.

There are cases in which the Heads of Sectors, who are something like the owners of the destinations of the couples where they are located, have sent men with beautiful wives to prison with the intention of separating them and making then available for their morbid purposes, they invent this classification of “dangerous”; on other occasions they imprison a sister who resists being their lover, or simply because an enemy pays a price to get them out of the way and expand their business by suppressing the competition.

Sometimes they have chosen someone for inclusion on the blacklist for a look that they dislike or they don’t like your face, or other impression according to their character or the nature of their personality.

An injustice that causes daily arrival of dozens of young people that nobody wants, young Cubans.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

La Lima Prison, March 2013

22 March 2013

Tell Me I Don’t Love You / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

TELL ME IT´S NOT TRUE

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Wait for the spring, Bandini.

The sparrows are universal, birds as strong as warplanes. The squirrels are cats, distrustful and tame, crazy and quarrelsome. The snow is sensual and warm (mmm, sorry, this is something that no Cuban in any other century notes). The sun is blue, translucent, treacherous: the temperature remains stuck at zero degrees Celsius, a unit of measure unknown in the USA. Just as Google Maps has created the city of New York, so the Weather web announces it will continue snowing this Monday beyond the equinox. For the first time in the world, it is a spring delayed.

Wait for the Spring, Pardini…

The subways are the filth of freedom. They are accurate and it is impossible to get lost if you look at the ever-present arrows and maps. They play guitars, pianos, saxophones, for tiny tips. Perhaps even mercy here bets on the profitability of repetition, as in Pop Art, so endemic. Everyone flees the car when there is the aroma of homelessness. I flee too, I also smell of never again having a house to hide myself in in Cuba peeking out at the spasms of New York.

It is a noble people. They look pretty. There is the light of a future. Strangers smile at me. I mostly know Cubans, they are my new neighbors. The waitresses are a genre in themselves, all seeming to be intellectuals working part-time while finishing their great New York trilogy (because it’s obvious that one novel is not enough).

The bridges rise and fall with the tide. I have seen pigeons over the Times Square traffic (like the sparrows they are also formidable birds, wearing suit and tie). On the iPhones there are applications to position the stars, making it virtually unnecessary to look at the sky. The sky is a hallucination, better to buy an insipid hamburger (I know nothing of food in the USA). I walk forests and parks with skating rinks. I would be delighted to break a leg (in theater it’s very good luck to say this and, also, I wouldn’t have to go so fast, because my bones would be sealed with the American new-nationality.

The public libraries are a magnetic pole, cloisters removed from the anomie of the kind drunks of American literature. They leave just a few used books for sale. So time outside the soul of my nation is slipping away. I’m at the point, but I still don’t offer myself in a showcase for hire.

New York, magical and evil stepmother, tell me it isn’t true. Tell me I’m not in love with you.

25 March 2013

I, Citizen / Regina Coyula

The Laboratorio Casa Cuba makes a very interesting proposal, a space of which I have vague references. Invited to give my opinion, I sent some ideas after a first reading. We are many who dream about Cuba, although our dreams might be like life: diverse and even opposed; the challenge is in finding consensus.

I invite you to enrich this proposal with your opinions. (labcasacuba@gmail.com)

Translated by: JT

22 March 2013

The 2013 Cuban Elections and the Multi-Party System / Dimas Castellanos

According to the official results of the “elections” held on Sunday, February 3 of this year, 1,249,832 Cubans, “14.22% of all voters,” did not go to the polls or cast invalid ballots in a clear display of their rejection of the Cuban electoral system.

The number of people behaving in this way has been growing over the last few elections. In 2003 the total of these two categories (non-voters and those who cast invalid ballots) was 506,453, or 6.09% of the electorate. In 2008 it was 657,119, or 7.73%. In the most recent elections, however, it rose to 1,249,832 Cubans, or 14.22% of the electorate, almost double the number from the previous balloting.

The most notable thing about this jump was the number of people who decided not to vote. In 2003 193,306 people abstained, 2.35% of the voters. In 2008 the figures were 264,212, or 3.11%. In 2013 the number rose to 790,551, 9.21%, nearly three times as many as in 2008.

To not vote “in a society without civil or political rights, under almost total state control and with only one constitutionally recognized party” is the most daring option.

In Cuba, where the only option is to approve the candidates chosen by the Candidacy Commissions — committees made up of leaders of mass organizations, whose own statutes declare them to be subordinate to the Communist Party — not voting is proof that the Government has lost the popular consensus. The results, therefore carry a clear lesson and are a message that the Cuban authorities should take to heart. To ignore this would lead to an inability to govern.

The reason behind the results is that it is really the Candidacy Commissions which choose the deputies who make up the National Assembly of the People’s Power. These deputies then choose the Council of State and its president as well as the president of the Council of Ministers. The latter then chooses the members of the Council of Ministers itself. As a result the National Assembly and the government are really determined by the powerful Candidacy Commissions. This explains why many Cubans decide not to vote to such a degree that abstentions now account now nearly 15% of the Cuban electorate. This is three times the number of members in the Communist Party. It also shows that the so-called elections in Cuba have little bearing on the difficult living conditions of the thousands and thousands of Cubans who live outside the law or who choose to leave the country.

Faced with a profound structural crisis like the one threatening Cuba, the election results are confirmation that is impossible to limit change to certain aspects of society. Therefore, in spite of the government’s persistence in ignoring the subject of a multi-party system, reality has succeeded in bringing it to the forefront. The election figures confirm the existence of a non-conformist segment of society that is demanding a political role. It is made up of Cubans who lack the right of free association and the right to participate in deciding the fate of the nation. How is it possible to justify the existence of a single party when almost 15% of voters do not respond to its call?

Social development does not exclude but rather implies a multi-party system as the natural expression of a diversity of ideas and interests. It is the mechanism by which citizens express themselves politically. The nation is a community of people who are diverse but equal in dignity. They are looking for a common good for which full economic, civil, political and cultural rights and responsibilities are essential. Therefore, the restitution of the right of association and the depenalization of political differences are necessary for Cubans to be able to play their corresponding active and decisive role in the changes to come.

In The Social Contract Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote that the union of persons to defend and protect their well-being emanates from a general will that transforms the parties to the contract into a collective political body. The exercise of this will confers power, which is referred to as sovereignty, and the party exercising it is sovereign. Based on this sovereign status, the people choose officials to carry out the general will and temporarily invest them with a mandate to propose and effect laws, and to preserve citizens’ liberties. In other words elections are a manifestation of popular sovereignty.

The violation of the constitutional order in Cuba, which occurred in 1952, gave rise to an insurrectional movement which overthrew the dictatorship in 1959. On January 8 of that month the leader of the revolutionary movement swore that he would hold elections in the shortest period of time possible and restore the constitution of 1940. However, several days later and without popular consultation, the nation’s Magna Carta was replaced with the Basic Law of the Republic of Cuba. By virtue of this Law, which was in force until the adoption of the constitution of 1976, the Council of Ministers assumed all legislative power and constitutionally affirmed one-party rule. From then until today “elections” have been carried out under this policy of exclusion in which the people cannot directly elect the president of the republic. This amounts to a clear rejection of our historic legacy.

The current system, which limits direct vote by the people to delegates for municipal assemblies, is one of the main causes for the indifference of those who do not take part or who cast invalid ballots. It is an efficient system for holding on to power, but useless for advancing the changes that society demands. All these issues emphasize the need to introduce a multi-party system and to carry out the corresponding changes to the constitution.

Published in DiariodeCuba.com

8 March 2013

Fresh Air / Fernando Damaso

After too many days of suspense, melodrama, necrophilia, sentimentality and hysteria, all in the style of Latin American magical realism, a time of fresh air was finally reached, with the election of the new Pope.

Jesuit and Latin American, for the first time in the long history of Catholicism, his presence has impacted both believers and non-believers for what it represents as a promise of changes within the Catholic church, which must mold itself more to the passing of the new times, if it wants to amplify and deepen its evangelical mission before the advance of extremism of all kinds in different world regions.

Francis the first, the Argentine pope, faces a very complex task, both within the fold, bringing order and restoring the Church’s ethical and moral principles, and externally, seeking peaceful coexistence among nations and easing tensions between different religions.

Two important events marked his ascent to the throne of St. Peter: the resignation of the previous Pope, in an act of extreme modesty and responsibility, both quite rare in the world today, and that he is a man of humble origin and of a firm honorable career as priest, bishop and cardinal.

His papacy, aside from the many difficulties that he will surely face, will have in its favor the faith of millions of believers and the respect of all people of noble sentiments who aspire to a world of tolerance and peace where the rights of every citizen are respected.

Translated by: Jenessy Rodríguez 

18 March 2013

Yoani Sanchez’s Press Conference at the United Nations – Videos / Yoani Sanchez

Stefano Vaccara, Italian journalist; Yoani Sanchez; interpreter.
Stefano Vaccara, Italian journalist; Yoani Sanchez; interpreter.
Videos of Yoani’s press conference at the United Nations on 21 March 2013, recorded by Alexis Romay on his cell phone from an imperfect vantage point.  (There are upload problems with Video 3 of 4, it will be added as soon as it is available.)

Video 1 of 4

Video 2 of 4

Video 3 of 4: Will be added as soon as it is available.

Video 4 of 4

21 March 2013

About Leaders and Responsibilities / Cuban Law Association, Lic. Rodrigo Chavez

Lic. Rodrigo Chávez

In the newspaper Granma, an article published with the title “About leaders and responsibilities”, by Félix López, makes it clear that a well-known old Cuban proverb “the rope breaks at the weakest point” would be ideal for this article.

How many of us who have always been subordinates have carried the blame for something which we had nothing to do with? And I say subordinate because whenever we have a superior, we are inevitably subordinate.

Say to yourself crime, contravention or indiscipline, they categorise and describe actions in this way because they are gathered up in legal regulations, but what’s for sure is that as a general rule, when regulations go unobserved, and are breached, usually the weight of the law falls on or breaks the weakest point: the “subordinate”.

Is it the workers who designate or choose their bosses? That’s as untrue as the belief that in the Management Board of any Employment Centre, the chief feels he is subject to the same conditions as his employees. Going to any Management Council is like being in the presence of a contract of adhesion “take it or leave it” – and to tell you the truth, we can understand even better than the people who work there that the chief has his entourage, incapable of or prevented from disagreeing with the decision of the supremo, except in rare circumstances, which are always viewed with disapproval and in terms of whingeing, trouble-making or out to make problems.

What can you say when a chief takes disciplinary measures against a subordinate and the latter complains to the Employment Law Authority (OJLB)? It would be a bit awkward if the worker were to leave victorious after the confrontation, because both he and the OJLB are employees and who would think of going against the wishes of the chief they will ask  themselves. “Who will guarantee my employment if we let the worker win?” Because although the regulations say that the Authority has to comply with the law when carrying out its functions, when the function of delivering justice gets to the decision, will they continue being employed?

When you get to a work location trying to work and experiencing difficulties, you will find out who is the Chief, Manager, Director, Administator… perhaps you will be lucky enough to see him and hear him from a distance at a meeting, but you also learn that this individual has been shifted out … how is this person supposed to know about the activities he has been asked to run? How are things going to operate? There are lots of unanswered questions, and anybody who is able to answer them does not do so.

Translated by GH

23 March 2013