The Leaders Feel “Threatened” After Obama’s Visit / 14ymedio

Eduardo Cardet, national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement. (Flickr)
Eduardo Cardet, national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement. (Flickr)

14ymedio, 21 April 2106 — The national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), Eduardo Cardet, argues that the communist leaders of Cuba felt “very threatened” by the recent visit of US President Barack Obama. “They fear losing power,” he said told the Catholic news agency Aciprensa on Wednesday.

“This entrenchment (of the senior leaders) in that old position demonstrates the fragility they feel, the fear in the face of the change that our people are expecting. The people of Cuba have changed, there is a diversity that is manifesting itself and there is an exhaustion with this official discourse and there is no longer any identification with the message that they want to impose on the people,” he asserts.

For Cardet, the recently concluded Seventh Congress of the Cuban Communist Party has been “more of the same” and has failed to meet the expectations of the people. However, the coordinator of the MCL admitted that no significant change was not expected at that meeting.

The opposition stressed that even “moderate Communist members” are “extremely disappointed” because they had “the hope that there would be a certain renewal within the core of the party to bring a fresh air, fresh ideas and they have seen that that opportunity has vanished and that nothing really positive has happened.”

Cardet considered the harsh criticism from Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez directed on Monday at the United States president as a proof of the fear of the party leaders of losing power. “Because of this they are returning to these hardline positions,” returning to the rhetoric of confrontation and “pointing to the United States as the empire that is supposedly destroying the Cuban nation and all these fallacies that do nothing to support reconciliation or the normalization of relations,” he said.

The leader of the movement founded by Oswaldo Paya stressed that the continued repression towards the opposition “shows that the Government has no intention of changing with regards to political tolerance” and he invited Cubans to “be united and work hard” to achieve a transition to a state of law.