A proverb says that man is the only animal that stumbles twice over the same stone. It could be added: With the exception of politicians, who never tire of it. Why bring this up? It turns out, watching the National Television News, something we rarely do, in various reports it appears that a major political leader in a working visit to eastern Cuba, first in one town suggested Raul as a delegate to the next Communist Party Congress, then another village, proposed Fidel, and finally, in another village, proposing himself. It’s not a Kafka story: it really happened.
It is known that the delegates to Party congresses should be chosen from their base. This is what the regulations say. If it were truly a democratic process, there would be nothing more to say, but the whole world, knows that it’s a formal process, where the leaders, to ensure their presence and permanence, are designated in advance based in areas of similarity (birth, insurrectionist struggle, etc.), where they must be nominated and elected. It’s the same system applied to the electoral process. It’s noteworthy that when they talk about eliminating anachronistic and bureaucratic methods, this one continues to be in use.
Another fact: in the meeting of the CADECAS (currency exchange) workers to analyze, discuss and approve the Guidelines for the 6th Communist Party Congress, some of them, perhaps motivated by having heard, “Do not fear differences of criteria or opinions, expressed preferably in place, time and form, that is in some appropriate place, at the opportune moment, and in the correct form, which will always be more desirable than false unanimity,” thought they could think freely. The Party official who, along with the managing director, presided over it, seeing that the opinions went beyond the set agenda, decided to suspend it, arguing that it wasn’t well-organized which was the fault of the director.
In either case, as it’s easy to check, for too many years they have applied primarily dogmatism and formalism, and it’s very difficult to eradicate it with a few speeches and, perhaps, good intentions. It’s a problem of a created mentality that needs deeper measures, if they want results and not to just keep spinning in place.
In order to have citizens, in the base, express what they really think and not what you want them to express, there has to be a dismantling of the entire system of organized social coercion, which is used to show there is a unanimity that in fact doesn’t exist and in which no one believes, starting with the highest leaders, when they establish: Reject the false unanimity, based in fakery and opportunism. I share the views that disagree with the regime: it is a right no one should be deprived of. Let us begin now to make it a reality.
February 24 2011
