[NYTr] Cuba’s Focus Shifts for 2008

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Circles Robinson Online - Dec 31, 2007
http://circlesonline.blogspot.com/2007/12/cubas-focus-shifts-for-2008.html

Cuba’s Focus Shifts for 2008

By Circles Robinson

If you are already convinced that the only thing Cuba needs is for
Fidel Castro to pass on and then to embrace the United States, there’s
not much reason to go on reading this commentary.

However, if you believe an island nation of 11.2 million inhabitants
has the right to try and improve a political system that, with all its
imperfections, has prioritized human needs and development over
consumerism and profits, please continue.

The year 2008 starts on a different note in Cuba. It’s not that the
challenge to resist another year of US blockade and hostility has
disappeared. To the contrary, the Bush administration and US Congress
approved an ever increasing amount of funds and personnel to further
tighten the screws.

What’s special is that the focus has turned inward to what the Cuban
government and people can do to make their socialist system work better
from within. The speech by acting President Raul Castro on December 28,
2007, closing the current legislature, and a written statement to that
body by President Fidel Castro the night before, appears to have set
the tone for what’s on the horizon.

In writing the parliament, Fidel Castro recognized the difficult tasks
before the legislature “in the face of many accumulated and growing
needs of our society.” He further noted: “In this difficult and at the
same time promising year (…) the Communist Party, government and mass
organizations are facing new problems in their relationship with an
intelligent, attentive and educated population that detests
bureaucratic obstacles and routine explanations.”

Fidel said he had read acting President Raul Castro’s speech in
advance. “I raise my hand along with yours in supporting him,” he
concluded in his message to the 609 lawmakers. Raul has been Cuba’s
acting president since July 31, 2006, while Fidel recovers from surgery.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled for January 20, 2008 and a new
31-member Council of State, to be elected from within the new
legislature, is expected to elect or reelect the president and
vice-president by March.

EXCESSIVE PROHIBITIONS AND LEGAL RESTRICTIONS

Raul spoke to the National Assembly and an attentive nationwide TV
audience reporting back on the feedback received over the last several
months when thousands of meetings were held at workplaces, communities
and neighborhoods throughout the island to discuss the problems facing
the nation. He said the country’s leadership had been aware of most of
the problems “at least those that we consider fundamental for the well
being of the population and the satisfactory performance of the
country’s economy and social programs.”

Raul said that the country’s excellent macro economic figures and
promising economic growth rates (7.5 percent in 2007 and averaging over
10 percent over the last three years) “must be reflected as much as
possible in Cuban homes where shortages exist on a daily basis.”

He said some measures would be immediate and others on issues like the
controversial two-currency system require more study before acting.
While he didn’t give any specifics of how and when certain changes
would occur, his words led people on the street to expect some action
to come in the beginning of 2008.

The acting president also spoke out against the “triumphalist and
self-indulgent tendency” that often prevails in declarations from
officials and in the media. We are “working to eliminate that damaging
tendency,” he insisted.

Raul’s announcement of the pending end of a series of “excessive
prohibitions and legal measures that cause more harm than good,” was
well received. He noted that “each incorrect prohibition leads to a
number of illegalities.”

With salaries being low across the board and not satisfying many basic
needs —as recognized by Raul in several speeches—, many professionals,
service workers and laborers alike have found themselves forced into
small scale illegal business activities to supplement their income.

This contradiction has produced an ethical problem, further complicated
when trying to pass on sound values to children and young adults.

Now that this troubling reality has been recognized by the top
authorities, expectations run high in many sectors of the nation; some
require greater resources to be met, and others policy changes.

One of the first measures on the horizon involves land grants to
cooperative and individual farmers —proven to be more efficient than
state farms— and a more determined effort to produce more of what the
country consumes to reduce food imports, which have soared in cost
along with oil.

“The studies are well along and continuing rapidly to create a
situation where the land and resources are in the hands of those
capable of producing efficiently, and so that these people feel
supported, socially recognized and receive the material compensation
they deserve,” said Raul, raising hopes for a new more productive era
in rural communities, once the pillar of the Cuban revolution.

Excessive bureaucracy is another throwback from the past that still
haunts Cuban society and hampers its potential.

The cumbersome paperwork and restrictions involving home repairs or
moving, car repairs and sales, traveling, and dealing with
inheritances, are frequent subjects of criticism among the population.

A classic Cuban comedy from 1966, “Death of a Bureaucrat” pokes fun at
a system that can make apparently simple matters into drawn out
nightmares. Forty years later, many of the same obstacles still exist
and are often the butt of jokes from comedians and the population
alike. Generations of Cubans have grown used to needing an overdose of
patience to not become overly frustrated.

After successfully keeping Washington, Miami and the CIA at bay and
surviving the worst years following the disappearance of the Soviet
Union, Cuba constantly receives international recognition for the
country’s free education and health care systems, its development in
science, sports and culture, and its altruistic foreign policy.

While trying to maintain those accomplishments, the island’s leaders
now look inward to deal with pending deficiencies they believe are
better to fight now than later.