Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Democratizing Cuba? (Part II)

Democratizing Cuba? (Part II)
February 14, 2012
Isbel Diaz Torres

HAVANA TIMES, Feb 14 — My previous post, "Democratizing Cuba (I),"
concluded with the expression "behind closed doors." As this is so
closely related to the topic I'm dealing with, I'd like to make some
comments about the discussions that took place during the recent
National Conference of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC).

The first is that — unlike what happened with last year's famous
"Guidelines" document, around which mass national debate was promoted
beforehand — such discussions didn't happen this time.

Even though discussion of the "Guidelines" wasn't structured so that
rank-and-file assemblies could actually change its content (nothing of
what was raised at my job was later reflected in the final version), at
least people could vent.

This time was it worse. The discussions were excluded from the majority
of the Cuban population, who aren't members of the PCC or the Young
Communist League (UJC) – though we're subordinate to the party by virtue
of Article 5 of the Cuban Constitution.

That was the first closed door.

Next, the changes made to the conference's draft document were reported
numerically [i.e. "…16 guidelines had been moved to other points, 94
remained unchanged, 181 were modified in content and 36 new guidelines
were incorporated"], however no mention was made of the contents that
were moved, modified or added.

In other words, if 300 commas were changed and 200 adjectives replaced,
for those people who didn't participate in the conference it was the
same as them having changed the single-party system to a multi-party
one. We simply didn't know what the members changed in the discussions.

That was another locked door.

Finally, the discussions in plenary sessions were televised days after
these took place to allow time for any necessary editing. I learned
about some comments made in some critical discussions that occurred
there, but apparently our people aren't prepared to see such things.

They did, however, allow us to see a few snippets of Mariela Castro, who
they certainly didn't allow in as a delegate; she was a guest, which
isn't the same.

Mariela argued for people not to be discriminated against because of
their gender identity, an issue that's not reflected in the laws, nor in
the constitution, and still not in the goals of PCC either.

Their rights were left "pending," just like what occurred in last year's
party congress concerning the issue of workers' control of state
enterprises.

Added to all this was our not being able to see the full debate. Rather,
we had to suffer through unfortunate, uninformed, unsupportive, and
insensitive addresses by City Historian Eusebio Leal and
writer/ethnographer Miguel Barnet.

Nonetheless, a brief phrase by Politburo member Esteban Lazo made me
raise an eyebrow.

The party leader said he "did in fact know" the number of suggestions
made on the point concerning discrimination.

That revelation made me wonder: How was it that he knew but the rest of
us didn't? Him having the privilege to the key to that door didn't seem
either fair or democratic.

Days later I read an article saying there were 11,285 suggestions, but
they didn't even say how many were for or against discrimination based
on sexual orientation.

This indicated yet another one of the problems of democratic practices
here: if this involves the power of the majority over the minority, then
they shouldn't have approved a point with so much opposition. Yet
fortunately that didn't occur.

Rights are important, even those of one man or one woman, and this
includes those who have a gender identity that's different from the one
arbitrarily assigned by society.

It's obvious that there's a long way to go for democracy to flourish
here. It just seems that neither last year's 6th Communist Party
Congress nor the recent National Conference of the Party are suitable
places for it. They have too many closed doors.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=62079

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