Cuban communist says Party shouldn't kick him out
By WILL WEISSERT
Associated Press Writer
HAVANA -- A prominent Cuban intellectual who publicly decried government
corruption is fighting expulsion from the Communist Party, saying the
punishment would hurt the country's global standing.
Historian Esteban Morales was recently ordered removed by a party
committee in Havana's Playa district, but lower-ranking members deemed
the action too harsh and rejected it while Morales appeals.
At issue is a blistering article he wrote in April declaring that
corruption at the top of Cuba's government - not the meddling of
opposition activists - is the greatest threat to the island's communist
system.
Morales posted a new article Monday on a leftist political website
saying that if the response to his original work was intended to punish
or making an example out of him, then it would reveal to the world how
closed-minded the party leadership is.
"It sends a message to the revolutionary intelligentsia, the party
faithful and the left in general that the party is going to be
relentless with those it considers to have erred, even if they did so in
good faith," he wrote on the leftist political site kaosenlared.net on
Monday.
Targeting him and potentially other whistle-blowers, Morales said, will
discourage self-criticism by party members. He is demanding the party,
"finish getting the dead weight of bureaucracy off our backs ... and
declare, as we have said, war without mercy against corruption."
In his April article, Morales said some Cuban officials are preparing to
divide the spoils if Cuba's political system disintegrates, like the
shadowy oligarchs who emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
That work was surprising in its frankness and appeared on the state-run
website of the National Artists and Writers Union of Cuba. It was
removed a day after foreign media in Havana reported on it - but has
subsequently been restored.
Morales wrote then that corruption is much more dangerous than organized
political dissent.
"Corruption is truly counterrevolutionary because it comes from within
the government and the state apparatus," he wrote.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/13/1728946/cuban-communist-says-party-shouldnt.html
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