Cuba/Elections: Criticism from Within

Cuba/Elections: Criticism from Within
February 14, 2013
Fernando Ravsberg*

HAVANA TIMES — Cuba has just concluded its general elections, and in
their wake is the reflection of Guillermo Rodriguez, a revolutionary
intellectual who is questioning some aspects of his country's electoral
system and is calling for more and better opportunities for participation.

Rodriguez is critical of there being no election campaigns in Cuba. "Not
only do we not finance political campaigns, but we don't even have
political campaigns. Perhaps it's because those are associated with
'politicking' – where candidates promise things they know they can't
deliver."

He recalls that prior to 1959 the island politicians would lie to the
electorate to win their votes – as is the case today in other countries.
However, the Cuban intellectual believes that "eliminating political
campaigns in order to eliminate politicking is like throwing out the
baby with the bathwater."

"In Cuba, all candidate promotion and ads are banned. All that's
permitted is a brief biography of the candidate along with a small ID
photo."

Nonetheless, Rodriguez insists that citizens are "interested more in
knowing what each candidate proposes to do as a deputy or what their
projects would be as a legislator."

Another criticism expressed in the article has to do with the district
representation that parliament should observe. Many deputies are elected
to represent places they haven't lived in for decades – and in some
cases they've never lived there.

"It's absurd for there to be a deputy from Sagua de Tanamo who hasn't
visited the town in a year," maintains the intellectual. He argues that
a deputy to parliament "should know the problems, deficiencies, and
needs of their region and their constituents, and they need to address
those through legislation."

"The economy is crying for decentralizing; the country needs a political
life," he said. "Little or no attention is paid to the Cuban legislators
since they can't address the problems that affect and sometimes
overwhelm their constituents."

To make matters worse, the image portrayed for decades on Cuban TV has
been that of a parliament that limits itself to unanimously "legalizing"
each of the measures announced by the executive.

Cubans have never seen a deputy questioning a ministerial or executive
report.

Electors in Cuba must vote for their representatives from a list that
indicates a single candidate for each position. The citizen doesn't have
the option of choosing between one candidate or another. The most they
can do is not vote for those they don't like.

Consequently, Rodriguez says, "If the voter doesn't have anyone to
select from, the (Candidature) Commission is the entity that determines
the makeup of the Assembly (…) In practice, it's the Candidature
Committee that elects the deputies."

He also questions the inclusion of 50 percent of the candidates not
being elected (at the local level) by the public. "That's too much, when
in fact most of them are government officials. I think it diminishes the
critical capacity of the National Assembly to assess the performance of
government."

Given this, he proposes a rather moderate change. He suggests Cuban
parliament increase its representativeness by including "individuals of
recognized prestige and those without commitments to the government,
though they could be members of the Communist Party."

Rodriguez concludes his article asserting that "the adoption of these
measures would significantly expand the democratic nature of our
elections and thus strengthen the links between the public and their
representatives. It would do us good."

Apparently he's not the only one who thinks this way. His analysis was
reproduced in several leftist Cuban blogs, including Segunda Cita, by
singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez.

Apparently, now the criticism is coming from within the revolution, and
it's being expressed by those who continue to support socialism.
—–
(*) An authorized HT translation of the original published by BBC Mundo.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=87730#comment-802119023

In Spain, the truth starts to come out about Paya "accident"

In My Opinion

Fabiola Santiago: In Spain, the truth starts to come out about Paya
"accident"
By Fabiola Santiago
fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com

At long last, Angel Carromero has broken his silence from the confines
of his negotiated parole status in Spain.

He was the woozy-eyed Spanish political activist seen from Havana on a
prosecutorial videotape issuing an unconvincing mea culpa that he was
driving too fast, that he was at fault for the deaths of two prominent
Cuban dissidents in a car crash last summer.

Carromero's "trial" for the deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero was
Cuban political theater at its best, a closed-door concoction to cover
up wrongdoing — state-sponsored murder? — a tactic Cubans in exile know
too well.

With Carromero now back in his homeland, the light of truth — tenuous
but illuminating — has begun to shine on the deaths of human rights
champion Payá and Cepero, the young activist who accompanied the
respected leader on a trip across the island to spread the message of
peaceful, democratic change.

The car crash in which Payá and Cepero lost their lives on July 22 was
no accident, Carromero told Payá's family in Spain this week. Another
vehicle rammed the car Carromero was driving and forced it off the road,
he said.

While Payá and Cepero, the ones seriously hurt, were left in the car,
men in a third car took away Carromero and Swedish politician Jens Aron
Modig, another human rights activist accompanying them.

"We don't know what happened to my father and [Cepero] … but hours later
they were both dead," Payá's daughter, Rosa María, told El Nuevo Herald
after her conversation with Carromero.

The Cuban government contends that Payá died instantly and that Cepero
died a few hours later in a Bayamo hospital. But they have refused to
allow anyone to see the autopsy reports.

Modig, at first detained along with Carromero, was allowed to return to
Stockholm after Carromero issued his mea culpa. He has remained silent
as the Spanish government negotiated Carromero's return to Spain to
serve out his Cuban sentence.

In Cuban custody, the only way to survive is to outsmart the jailers.
Carromero and Modig did what they had to to secure their way out of Cuba.

But it's time now to speak up and tell the truth — and for the
governments of the European Union, Latin America and the United States
to push for an international investigation of the car crash and its
aftermath.

In a parliamentary hearing Thursday, Spanish government leaders admitted
under pressure that they're in a tenuous situation with Cuba because
four Spanish citizens remain in Cuban prisons and they're negotiating
those releases as well. It sounded almost like an admission of blackmail.

Payá and Cepero deserve justice.

Both men had been accosted by pro-government mobs, were constantly
followed by state security, and had been repeatedly threatened. In fact,
Payá didn't make trips outside of Havana because of the danger, but in
the Europeans' company he felt a measure of safety.

A state-sponsored murder is a serious charge, but this is nothing new
for a government with a record of dealing violently with the peaceful
opposition.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/01/3262014/fabiola-santiago-in-spain-the.html#storylink=misearch

Cuban dissident's daughter: I was told of another car involved in crash

Posted on Thursday, 02.28.13

Cuban dissident's daughter: I was told of another car involved in crash
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

The daughter of Cuban dissident Oswado Payá said Thursday that the
Spanish politician convicted in her fathers' death told her in person
that another vehicle rammed his — and that Payá first survived the accident.

Angel Carromero "confirmed the events that we had already alleged," Rosa
Maria Payá told El Nuevo Herald by phone from Madrid after a news
conference in which she laid out details of the allegation that Cuban
security agents caused the fatal accident.

Payá said her meeting with Carromero was not recorded, and that she
expects the Spaniard, on parole in Madrid while serving the four-year
sentence imposed by a Cuba court for vehicular homicide, will speak
publicly about the case when he's ready.

Carromero has not spoken in public about the fatal accident July 22 but
recorded a video with Cuban prosecutors in which he stated that his car
ran off the road but made no mention of a ramming by another car.
Friends in Madrid say he has claimed that his memory of the crash was
fuzzy because of the heavy painkillers he received at a Cuban hospital
after the accident rash.

According to Payá's daughter, Carromero confirmed to her that another
vehicle rammed the rented car he was driving from behind and forced it
off the road near the eastern city of Bayamo. Aboard were Carromero,
Payá and fellow dissident Harold Cepero and Swedish politician Jens Aron
Modig.

She added that Carromero claimed he had no memory that his car went off
the road and smashed into a tree — the Cuban government version of the
crash. That version also maintains that Payá died immediately and Cepero
died hours later in a hospital.

Carromero told her that men in a third car stopped at the site of the
accident and drove away the two Europeans while the two Cubans remained
behind.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/28/3259101/cuban-dissidents-daughter-i-was.html#storylink=misearch

Chávez's 'revolution' will lose steam abroad, but not at home

Posted on Tuesday, 03.05.13
The Oppenheimer Report

Andres Oppenheimer: Chávez's 'revolution' will lose steam abroad, but
not at home
By Andres Oppenheimer
aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's death will most likely mark the
beginning of the end of Venezuela's political clout in Latin America,
but his influence inside Venezuela is likely to last for many decades.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom in the international media that
Chávez was the political heir of Cuba's guerrilla
leader-turned-president Fidel Castro, the late Venezuelan president will
probably go down in history as a political phenomenon closer to that of
late Argentine strongman Juan D. Perón.

Like Perón, Chávez was a military officer and coup plotter who first
flirted with fascism, later turned to the left, and once in power gave
millions to the poor thanks to a boom in world commodity prices, which
set him apart from previous Venezuelan presidents who had only paid lip
service to the country's poverty-stricken masses. And like Perón, Chávez
was a narcissist — he once used the word "I" 489 times in just one
speech, on Jan 15, 2011 — who built a personality cult around himself,
and impulsively gave away billions of dollars at home and abroad without
any accountability, at the expense of destroying his country's
institutions and much of the economy.

Chávez's influence in Latin America during his 13 years in power grew in
direct proportion to world oil prices.

When he took office in 1999, oil prices hovered around $9 a gallon. When
oil prices started rising gradually to more than $80 a barrel in the
years that followed, Chávez started bankrolling loyalist politicians in
Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and other Latin American countries, and
ultimately built his ALBA bloc of Latin American allies that followed
his narcissist-Leninist model.

By 2006, Chávez was giving away up to $3.7 billion a year in Latin
America — compared to the Bush administration's $1.2 billion — to buy
political influence as he was drumming up support for his unsuccessful
bid for a Venezuela seat at the United Nations Security Council.

Many of his grandiose money pledges never materialized — like a pipeline
that was supposed to go from Caracas to Buenos Aires, which skeptics at
the time branded the "Hugoduct" — and some of his pledges for huge
infrastructure projects in Africa and Asia drew criticism at home, where
roads and bridges were crumbling.

But Chávez's influence abroad began after oil prices reached a record
$146 a barrel in 2008. Since then, and especially after Chávez was
diagnosed with a never-revealed form of cancer in mid-2011 and oil
prices fell further, Chávez's petro-dollar generosity has been confined
to Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and a few Caribbean countries.

Now, with Venezuela's economy in near chaos, a 30 percent inflation rate
and oil prices unlikely to reach their previous records in the near
future, Venezuela will have to give up its regional ambitions, for the
simple reason that it has run out of money.

And regardless of who will run Venezuela in the future, the days of
oil-based populist megalomania are likely over because of global trends
in the energy industry.

According to most forecasts, the United States will replace Saudi Arabia
as the world's top oil producer in five years, which will cause a
reduction in U.S. oil imports and a decline in world oil prices. This
will make it hard for Chávez's successors to keep bankrolling
Venezuela's radical populist allies in the region.

But at home in Venezuela, "Chavismo" will probably remain alive as the
biggest political force for generations to come. Because Chávez's years
in power coincided with the biggest oil boom in Venezuela's recent
history, and because Chávez gave away so much money to the poor, he is
more likely to be remembered as a "champion of the poor" than as the
populist who destroyed the country's private sector, scared away
investments, and turned Venezuela more oil-dependent than ever.

From now on, much like happened in Argentina after Perón's death, most
presidential hopefuls will declare themselves "Chavistas," even if they
despised the late military coup plotter-turned-president.

And much like happened in Argentina in recent decades, we will see
"Chavista" politicians of all colors: radical leftists, moderate,
centrist and rightists. In his never-ending speeches, which sometimes
lasted more than six hours, they will find enough memorable quotes to
support almost any political theory.

Guillermo Lousteau, a professor at Florida International University who
heads the Inter-American Institute of Democracy, believes that Chávez
will go down in history not so much like Perón, but like Ernesto "Che"
Guevara — a cult figure whose influence today is more romantic than
political.

"Chávez will become a cultural icon: we will see T-shirts with Chávez's
face, much like we see T-shirts with Che Guevara's face, but his
influence won't go farther than that," Lousteau told me.

"Chávez is no longer alive to keep the Chavista movement united, like
Perón was after he was thrown out of office," Lousteau said. "Without a
charismatic leader, and with a deteriorating economy, Chavismo will
implode."

My opinion: Latin America's political cycles tend to change every dozen
years, and Chávez's death — alongside stagnant commodity prices — is
likely to accelerate the waning days of Chávez's "Bolivarian revolution"
in Latin America.

Much like we had military dictatorships in the 1970s, social-democracies
in the 1980s, pro-free market governments in the 1990s', and "Chavismo"
in the 2000s, we may be entering a new decade of something different —
hopefully democratic pragmatism.

But Chávez's undeserved image as the region's biggest champion of the
poor — in fact, countries like Peru and Chile reduced poverty more than
Venezuela in recent years, and without weakening their democracies —
will have a lasting negative impact on Venezuela. As often happens in
commodity-rich countries, populist leaders thrive during booms in world
commodity booms. Then, when commodity prices go down and they leave
office — whether they are thrown out or, as in Chávez's case, die in
office — their successors have to take unpopular economic measures, and
the former populist leaders' followers can say, "You were better off
when we were in power."

Venezuela will be no exception to Latin America's commodity curse.
Chávez's populism will remain popular for decades. It will take a lot of
time — and education — to convince many Venezuelans that Chavismo was
"bread for today, hunger for tomorrow,'' and that the most successful
countries are those that have strong institutions, rather than strong men.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/05/v-fullstory/3268977/chavezs-revolution-will-lose-steam.html

How will the Venezuela-Cuba link fare after Chávez's death?

Posted on Tuesday, 03.05.13

How will the Venezuela-Cuba link fare after Chávez's death?
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has given free rein to
fears that Cuba will plunge into an economic abyss again if Caracas
halts its subsidies, estimated at well above the massive aid that the
Soviet Union once provided to Havana.

"The impact of a cutoff will be that the crisis we now have will turn
into chaos, because the Cuban government has no other source of
financing," said Miriam Leiva, a Havana dissident and former Cuban diplomat.

Havana now gets two-thirds of its domestic oil consumption from Caracas
— about 96,000 barrels per day — and pays part of the bill with the
vastly overpriced labor of 35,000 Cuban medical personnel, teachers and
others working in Venezuela.

The rest of the bill is chalked up as a debt, mostly to Venezuela's
PDVSA oil monopoly, which now stands at more than $8 billion, said Jorge
Piñon, a Cuba–born oil expert at the University of Texas in Austin.

"If Cuba had to pay $96 to $98 per barrel, that would mean a gigantic
negative impact on its cash register," Piñon said.

A July report by the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit noted that
an oil cutoff could plunge the island's import-export balance into the
red and lead to "the possible imposition of restrictions on energy
consumption outside key industries."

Venezuela also is now by far the island's single-largest commercial
partner, with bilateral trade officially pegged at $6 billion in 2010 —
more than Cuba's trade with the next five countries together — and
likely one of its largest sources of hard currency.

Carmelo Mesa-Lago, an economist and professor emeritus at the University
of Pittsburgh, has estimated that Venezuela in fact accounted for more
than 20 percent of the country's overall economic activity in 2010.

Cuban officials have not commented on a post-Chavez future, but
highlighted his importance to the island when they interrupted TV
programs Dec. 8 to announce that the president would return to Havana
for another surgery of his battle with cancer.

Some analysts argue that a cut in Venezuelan aid might prove beneficial
to Cuba in the long run by forcing ruler Raúl Castro to drastically
broaden and speed up the reforms toward a market economy that he has
been pushing since 2007.

Castro's reforms so far have done little to resolve the massive problems
in the economy, from bottom-of-the barrel industrial productivity and
salaries to a stalled rural sector that forced Havana to import $1.6
billion worth of agricultural products in 2011.

"It's imperative to have a truly deep opening that would allow Cubans to
import and export, professionals to be productive and enterprising
citizens to become the motor for the economy," wrote Emilio Morales,
head of the Havana consulting Group in Miami.

Havana also might not feel an aid cutoff as sharply as it felt the end
of the Soviet subsidies because its good relations with China and Brazil
could attract some additional support from them, according to the
Economist Intelligence Unit report.

And Venezuela may only trim and not totally cut off its assistance
because it benefits from the relationship through the Cuban doctors, who
treat poor families that tend to vote for Chávez's party, as well as
security, military and other advisers.

Chávez's handpicked successor, Vice President Nicolas Maduro, reportedly
favors continuing the tight relationship with Havana. Diosdado Cabello,
head of the legislative National Assembly and also mentioned as a
possible successor, is believed to be less friendly to Cuba yet for now
seems to have little chance of overtaking Maduro.

But Cuba today is less prepared to deal with an aid cutoff because the
island's infrastructure is in much worse shape than when the Soviet
Union's subsidies collapsed in the early 1990s, argued dissident Havana
economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe.

Cuba built its massive health, education and social welfare system on
the backs of the $4 billion to $6 billion in subsidies that the Soviet
Union provided to the communist-ruled ally each year from the mid 1960s
until 1991.

But when Moscow cut off its rubles, the island's economy shrank by 38
percent between 1990 and 1993 and its foreign trade, previously focused
on the Soviet bloc because of its friendly payment terms, dropped by 85
percent.

Factories and transportation ground to a halt. Cubans grew noticeably
thinner and suffered from diseases caused by malnutrition. Power
blackouts lasted for days. Families cooked grapefruit rinds, and many
cats disappeared from the streets.

But two decades later, several sectors of the economy still have not
returned to their pre-1990 levels, Mesa Lago noted in a report presented
at the 2011 Miami gathering of the Association for the Study of the
Cuban Economy.

"Cuban industry is producing 50 percent less by volume than it produced
in 1989. The transportation system has collapsed, and agriculture is
importing 80 percent of the food" the country consumes, Espinosa Chepe
was quoted as saying in a recent report by the Agence France Press news
agency.

Then-ruler Fidel Castro imposed what he called "a special period in time
of peace" in 1990 — in essence wartime emergency measures to conserve
fuel, food, clothes and other supplies.

But the Soviet aid cutoff fueled much discontent, which finally exploded
in 1994 with the Balsero Crisis, which saw 35,000 Cubans leave on
homemade rafts, and a large riot on the Malecón, Havana's iconic seaside
boulevard."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/05/v-fullstory/3268483/how-will-the-venezuela-cuba-link.html

Cuba confirms 51 cholera cases in Havana

15 January 2013 Last updated at 21:22 GMT

Cuba confirms 51 cholera cases in Havana

Cuba's health ministry has confirmed a cholera outbreak in Havana with
51 people infected - the biggest incidence of the disease there in decades.

An official statement said health workers had detected an increase in
"acute diarrhoea" in some districts, which has been established as cholera.

The source has been identified as a foodseller who caught cholera during
a previous outbreak in eastern Cuba.

Doctors have been going house to house in Havana areas, checking for
symptoms.

The official confirmation follows several days of speculation about an
upsurge in diarrhoea in the capital, where the BBC understands a
46-year-old man died of suspected cholera earlier this month.

In the central Havana district of Cerro, where the outbreak is believed
to have begun, cafes and restaurants have been closed and only the sale
of sealed food and drink is permitted.

The outbreak was detected on 6 January. According to the health
ministry, measures taken since then mean the disease is in its
"extinction phase".

People are being urged to take care with hygiene and in the preparation
of food.

Cholera is carried by contaminated water or food. It causes severe
dehydration through diarrhoea and can prove fatal if untreated.

Until last July, Cuba had not experienced any significant outbreak since
well before the 1959 revolution.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21023366

Cholera fear in Cuba as officials keep silent

13 January 2013 Last updated at 08:10 GMT

Cholera fear in Cuba as officials keep silent
By Sarah Rainsford BBC News, Havana

Uvaldo Pino was a neighbourhood barber in Cerro, one of the poorer and
more overcrowded districts of Cuba's capital, Havana.

In late December, the 46-year-old fell sick with vomiting and diarrhoea
and died in hospital on 6 January.

The barber's family say he had two separate tests and both came back
positive - for cholera.

"We don't know how he was infected," his sister, Yanisey Pino, told the
BBC at the family's home, a few blocks from the capital's Revolution Square.

"He was treated, he had all the medicine, but his organs didn't respond.
It was too late."

Yanisey added that her brother was a heavy drinker and had checked
himself out of hospital the first time he was admitted.

A week after Uvaldo's death, Cuba's health ministry has not yet made any
public pronouncement. But there are increasing signs that the barber's
case is not an isolated one.
'Dozens' of admissions

Doctors are now making door-to-door enquiries in Havana and anyone
displaying possible cholera symptoms is being tested. Suspected cases
are being sent to the Tropical Medicine Institute, the IPK.

"All our wards are dealing with this issue - they are almost full," an
IPK employee told the BBC by telephone, before saying she was not
authorised to comment further.

Another staff member, contacted later and also not authorised to speak
to the media, said the IPK did not have any confirmed cases of cholera
at this point.

But Yanisey Pino says her brother was diagnosed with cholera both by his
local hospital and the IPK.

The day Uvaldo died, health workers visited the family where they live -
in several cramped houses around a small yard. Relatives and neighbours
were issued antibiotics as a precaution.

The area has been disinfected and water samples were taken for testing.
Meanwhile, nearby bars and cafeterias have been closed or instructed not
to sell food or drink that is not pre-packed.

Elsewhere in the neighbourhood, there are similar scenes.

One resident, Yudermis, fell sick just before the New Year, along with
four other relatives including her seven-year-old son. The family
assumed they had food poisoning but Yudermis says her cousin then tested
positive for cholera at their local clinic.

"The health workers then came here asking questions, like if we had
diarrhoea," she explains inside their rundown family home as her son,
now fully recovered, plays nearby.

"They sent us all to hospital by ambulance and the tests came back positive.

"There were a lot of people at the IPK," Yudermis adds, describing
dozens of admissions while she was being treated, and not all from her
own district of Cerro.

"I was in a bad way. It was frightening. But we're fine now."

Before she fell sick, Yudermis had never even heard of cholera, which is
rare in Cuba.
Cold grills

The World Health Organisation (WHO) describes cholera as "extremely
virulent". Carried by contaminated water or food, it causes severe
dehydration through diarrhoea and can prove fatal if untreated.

Until last summer, there had been no significant outbreak on the island
since well before the revolution.

But in July the health ministry confirmed that three people had died of
cholera in the east of the country. A contaminated well was identified
as the source.

In Havana, Cuba's bustling and crowded capital and a key tourist centre,
strict measures are in place to contain the latest suspected outbreak.

"We can't sell anything that's not in sealed bottles until further
notice and all food sales have been suspended," explains Tony, at the
Cerro Moderno cafe, a short walk from the home of Yudermis. Its fridge
is now empty and the grills cold.

Local doctors confirmed this is standard procedure for several blocks
around every location where someone tests positive for cholera.

"If they take all the right measures, we'll be fine," Tony shrugs,
adding that everyone has been given antibiotics as a precaution.

"I took my pills straight away!" says Angel, as he buys cigarettes at
the cafe.

"I don't know what cholera is and I don't want to find out. People here
are using chlorine and boiling their water. You have to take care."
Rumour mill

Pharmacies across the city are now selling water purification drops,
rationed to two small bottles per person.

But in the tourist heart of Old Havana, cafes and restaurants remain
open and the streets are still full of mobile food and drink vendors.

Most say they have heard rumours of a cholera outbreak in Cerro and are
taking extra precautions, but none have received any official instructions.

The WHO stresses "public communication" as a key tool in controlling any
cholera outbreak.

In Havana, that task has so far been left to local doctors who are very
connected to their communities.

But as rumours fill the information void, concern on the streets is growing.

"I'm racking my brains trying to understand why there's nothing on TV
about this," says Yanisey Pino, echoing many peoples' comments.

"Why don't they say something? Inform people, like in other countries,
so they're not afraid and can protect themselves! But there's no
information at all."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21002191