Comptroller vs. corruption
A Reporter’s Notebook
Comptroller vs. corruption
By Manuel Alberto Ramy
The Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR) is ready to launch an attack against corruption, an evil that has been undermining the Cuban economy’s productive and service bases. The news was announced Monday by the weekly newspaper Trabajadores, when it said the Comptroller’s Office, an agency that reports directly to the Council of State, will audit about 750 companies.
Gladys Bejerano, the agency’s chief, told the weekly that the control systems “have weakened a lot,” facilitating “the conditions for unscrupulous persons to engage in corruption.”
The rerouting and theft of resources, known as “trapicheo” or hanky-panky, supply the enormous black market that moves underground throughout the island. It is this illegal market that provides goods that the consumer cannot buy in stores or other establishments, such as hardware stores.
More than a year ago, I told in this section of Progreso Weekly my personal experience, when I went to buy a toilet bowl at a store in the FOCSA, in the populated barrio of El Vedado. At the store, they could sell me the bowl – but without the lid.
I seem to remember that, when I asked the clerk why this was so, he told me “it came that way.” To buy the bowl “that way,” I would have to pay 118 convertible pesos (CUC). If I wanted it the way God meant it to be (and the sanitation laws required), I had to buy the lid separately … but they didn’t have it in stock. Or I could buy a complete bowl, with lid, for a lot more money.
I asked how they accepted products in those conditions, i.e., incomplete, from the factory. The answer was a shrug, a shaking of the head and pursed lips. Indifference. I bought the complete set, bowl and lid, at another store, on Infanta Street.
That wasn’t the whole story. It was just the beginning. Outside the second store, an agile and shrewd “vendor” offered me the complete product for the same price – and it included home delivery.
Why did the man on the street have a complete set and the store didn’t? Did the missing part walk out of the store and into the vendor’s hands? Out of the main warehouse? Commercial surrealism.
The vendors who stand outside the stores are “in full face,” a popular expression meaning in front of everybody. They act brazenly, with impunity, and are visible to the stores’ employees and managers.
This is not new. For years we’ve seen two economies and two systems of commerce in operation. The illegal market feeds off the state’s warehouses and stores, despite the many security guards present. And the people look to satisfy certain needs, not luxuries, no matter how or from whom.
This sequence of needs, lack of control, and corruption in factories, stores and population translates into a loss of values, such as honesty.
It’s a good thing – an excellent thing – for the CGR to go into battle. Even better that the places to be audited will be selected at random, not told in advance. It appears that we’re already indebted to the CGR for something: the shameful case of Cubana de Aviación and its tour operator, Sol y Son, and perhaps other instances.
To control, oversee, audit – all indispensable tasks – are instruments that lead to solutions. I use the plural (solutions) because we have to go to the heart of the matter: an economic model that will incorporate other forms of property and management that are perfectly compatible with socialism.
Would a member of a cooperative steal from himself? Would he allow someone “in full face” to illegally sell products that compete with the ones he sells? Or would he loudly denounce the errors and noncompliances that affect him (some examples are already being shown on TV) as was the case of the farmers who complained about distributors who did not honor their commitments?
Manuel Alberto Ramy is chief correspondent of Radio Progreso Alternativa in Havana and editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso Weekly.
