Doi Moi and ‘actualization’ The urgency to generate a consensus

By Lenier González Mederos

HAVANA – If anything has characterized the project of reforms put forth by President Raúl Castro, it has been the silence that surrounds the stages of its unfolding.

We know that the reform’s key strokes are sketched in the Guidelines of the Economic Policy of the Party and the Revolution, as debated, modified and later confirmed by the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. Outside this programmatic project, with very general tones that allow for differing interpretations, we know very little about the pace and deadlines set and the thresholds to be reached.

As a friend of mine might say: We’re all playing soccer without quite knowing where the goal posts are.

Such political lack of definition has advantages and disadvantages for the Cuban government. On one hand, it allows it to link the reform’s deadlines to the internal logic of power and to the contextual requirements of geopolitics. On the other, it creates uncertainty among the social and political actors standing on the Cuban stages. This, in my opinion, holds back Raúl Castro’s greatest challenge: the need to generate a consensus around the project.

For the record, I’m not referring only to bringing the reformist and conservative sectors to agree with each other within the party and state structures. I’m also talking about something even more complex: putting these sectors’ ears to the ground, so they may – in constant interaction with the citizenry – dialogue about, and reach a consensus on, a project of reforms that will embrace the general aspirations of the nation, in constant interaction with a society that is extremely varied, both in political and ideological terms.

In my opinion, the success of the ongoing transformations depends on – in addition to foreign investment, “pilot” projects, fiscal adjustments, megaports, golf courses and Scarabeos – the capacity to interact with the whole gamut of national actors. Or, to put it another way, we need a new way to make politics.

In this context, two statements made recently by important political leaders deserve to be mentioned. On April 13, the newspaper Granma, organ of the PCC, published an interview with Nguyen Phu Trong, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

While the Cuban authorities had always bet on a “Cuban model” that would take into account international experiences, for the first time a medium of the national press expresses a certain sympathy toward a specific model, the Vietnamese model.

Vice President Marino Murillo, in a press conference during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, affirmed that the government welcomes “anything that comes, that preserves the unity of the nation, Cuban socialism and our development.” He also stated categorically that there would be no political “actualization” of the Cuban model, only an economic updating.

Both Trong and Murillo said that it is vital for the ongoing reforms to keep in mind “the specificities” of each country.

I understand the immediate political advantage for the Cuban government derived from the statements of the Vietnamese leader, particularly the one about reducing the influence of the “harder” sectors in the party and state structures that torpedo the ongoing reforms.

However, let me point out the risk to Cuba of developing an economic reform that turns its back on the majority of the actors present on Cuban stages, including the Cuban community in the United States, which has a demonstrated ability to influence the domestic policy of that important nation.

The correct understanding of the desires of the real Cuba – complex, diverse, multifaceted – and the ability to generate a new political endeavor in tune with the desires of Cuba’s society constitute the greatest challenge to the Cuban government today.

It is a challenge that goes beyond the imperative of “actualizing” the economic model and focuses on the urgent need to find a consensus on the path the nation should follow, with all the implications regarding social dialogue, institutional reform and broadening of individual liberties.

The defense of social justice and national sovereignty, the preservation of the internal order, and the democratization of Cuba’s public life constitute a profound nationalistic aspiration that is shared by many in the Cuban political spectrum. It is for this reason that the construction of a nationalistic consensus should be a crucial objective in the present circumstances.

To broaden the domestic political consensus is the only way to deal with foreign interference in our internal affairs. It is also the only way to achieve long-range national stability.

In that sense, the flexibility and pragmatism the Catholic Church and the Cuban government have shown in their relationship becomes paradigmatic in the current context. The Cuban government should use those same attributes to carry out its relationship with other social actors in Cuba and outside.

Those of us who follow closely the dynamics of Church-State relations know that both institutions differ greatly on key issues of the nation’s life. However, that has not barred them from turning – with respect and transparency – old areas of conflict into areas of cooperation.

Both institutions seem to have reached a consensus on the issues of support for the family and youth, the promotion of values, coordinated support for disadvantaged social sectors, the exercise of human rights in the area of religious freedom, the positive reaccommodation of the island’s relations with the émigré communities, the success of the current economic reform, and the rejection of the aggressive policies of U.S. administrations against Cuba.

But where obviously there isn’t a consensus between Church and government it’s on the subject of the immediate course the country must follow in order to concretize a socio-political model that will guarantee a broader participation of the entire national political spectrum, in accordance with the principles sketched by the Pope and the national Episcopate represented by Msgr. Dionisio García, Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba.

Nevertheless, this important disagreement has not hindered the efforts to engage on an agenda for dialogue.

Whatever the road the nation takes, it is clear that without new forms of doing politics and thereby generating a consensus among Cubans with dissimilar political positions, it will be impossible to move with any stability toward the future. I am convinced that this is the principal “specificity” that the Cuban “actualization” needs. 

Lenier González Mederos, a Cuban journalist, is deputy editor of Espacio Laical (Lay Space), the magazine of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Havana. He wrote this article for Progreso Weekly/Semanal.

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