Delegates propose to hold countless meetings but warn that the solution depends on the Government
14ymedio, Havana, September 14, 2024 — A new “meeting fever” threatens to occupy the agenda of Cuba’s leaders between September and November. The huge number of exchanges they have planned to attend is almost impossible, but it already appears on paper: in Villa Clara alone, for example, they will carry out 5,300 “dialogues with the people.” In Havana there will be more than 10,000. In heavily populated municipalities, such as Arroyo Naranjo, the plan is to celebrate 1,327.
These are the accountability assemblies – in which each delegate is accountable to the voters – that the Government held in 2021 and then postponed for several reasons: the pandemic, first, and then the endless “situation that the country faced,” a label with which the official press summarizes three years of blackouts, shortages and transport crises.
There has been little change in Cuba, but Parliament considers it so “necessary” to hold meetings that workers who attend will even be exempted from work. The “essences of the Revolution” are at stake, argued the organizing committee in Havana. According to Liván Alonso Izquierdo – former secretary of the Party in Ciego de Ávila, promoted to a post in Havana – the assemblies propose an objective: “to defend the Cuban political system.”
According to Liván Alonso Izquierdo, the assemblies propose an objective: “to defend the Cuban political system”
The local leaders have taken the instruction literally, and even meeting “rehearsals” are being carried out. In the Virginia People’s Council, in Santa Clara, the leaders of Villa Clara held their “model assembly” this week. It is part of the long process of preparing the cadres that the official press has been reporting on for months – also with record numbers of “heard concerns” – to “strengthen the ties between the people and their delegates.”
Vanguardia admits that the moment is “extremely complex” and that the Government will not be able to respond “immediately” to the flood of requests which, judging by the number of meetings, will be written in the minutes. “Many of them require investments and their incorporation into the plans of the economy for a definitive solution,” which means we will have to keep waiting, but the dialogue, says the report, is a “challenge” in itself.
There will also be meetings of leaders with leaders, of the Government with the Party and of leaders with subordinates. The objective is to draw attention to state administrators, whose corruption has been the subject of many articles in the official press during the last year. The most serious will need “sponsorship,” a euphemism that refers to greater vigilance so that “community problems” do not continue.
As if that were not enough, groups of pre-university students and those from the Central University of Las Villas will also attend each meeting, “as observers” of the process.
Groups of pre-university students and those from the Central University of Las Villas will attend each meeting “as observers”
The conversations, they predict, will not be comfortable. “We will have to face objective problems that directly affect our daily lives, such as the situation with transport, the instability of the National Electricity System, the collection of solid waste, the condition of the roads, the limitations with medicines and the assurance of the basic family basket, among other problems that affect the population,” warns the official press. This comes just after the notice that no practical response will be given to these problems.
The newspapers of the Communist Party have also taken care, in recent weeks, to publish profiles and interviews of the delegates, so that the citizens can “know” them. In Escambray, for example, Alexis Cáceres appeared this Thursday, a state chef turned politician who is now a delegate of Kilo-12, one of the poorest neighborhoods of Sancti Spíritus.
The leader says that he has spent years “wisely carrying on his shoulders the burden of dissatisfaction” of his 1,700 voters. Cáceres complains that he “lacks the attention” of his superiors and the money to resolve problems with the pharmacy, the doctor’s office, the ration store and the water supply system in his area, the Santa Cruz neighborhood. There are difficulties with the sewer system, and the problems with the aqueduct are alarming. It has cost a lot, he says, “to keep Kilo-12 away from demonstrations of alienation.”
Cáceres states that he and his colleagues have these petitions annotated with bullet points and red underlining in their agendas, the same ones that – along with the checkered shirts, the meetings and the bellies – have become a symbol of the Cuban leader. He talks a lot and takes notes, but solves little.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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