Scarcity is a "Perverse Strategy" of the Cuban Government, Says Opposition Group

A line to buy potatoes at the market at 37th and 6th, La Timba, in Havana’s Plaza municipality. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 24 May 2019 — The Democratic Action Unity Round Table (Muad) accuses the Cuban government of employing a “perverse strategy” of using political shortages to throw blame on the United States. The opposition group maintains that the “difficult dietary conditions, the exaggeration of the liturgy of the resistance and the indictment of the embargo” have defined life in Cuba for the last sixty years and, “in a cruel way,” in the 90s.

“The images of the crowds, the fights and the social stress at food stores, whose prices exceed the sum of several average salaries when you want to feed your family more than two or three times a week, doesn’t anger: it scandalizes,” they protest in a press release.

In the text, Muad denounces the Government talk about productive growth and the “parsimony” of the situation while citizens take to the streets and line up the minute they hear a product has arrived at the markets. In addition, in their opinion that lack is not explained by the lack of liquidity since in Cuba one pays “a price that exceeds the price paid by our peers in the rest of the world.”

The group points out that another government strategy, “more humane,” is to impede the development of the private sector, which they believe has been the most productive in recent years, since Raúl Castro introduced measures that made it possible.

However, it is necessary to “release entrepreneurs from the limitations, recognize their legal status and allow the broad importation of all their needs.” Other measures cited to improve free markets are “lifting the absurd prohibitions that impede farming and livestock production,” facilitate the acquisition of modern means of transport and develop processing industries, refrigeration and derivatives.

Although Muad stresses that it does not attribute legitimacy to the Government and the President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz Canel, they urge him to act with the responsibility that his position represents and they ask him to step aside if he is not able to do so and allow other citizens to take on the work.

Finally, Muad notes that the aforementioned economic rights are not separate from political rights and asks the State to ratify the United Nations International Covenants on Human Rights which considers them as an inseparable system.

“We want to remind the private sector that it is looking not only at the growth of business, but also at producing for free customers and doing so with sovereign workers.”

Muad, born in 2015, is defined as “a coalition of organizations, groups and political people” that seeks “to democratize the Cuban political system by peaceful and democratic means for a new project of an inclusive nation.”

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