In politics, credibility is all-important. When citizens believe an institution is incapable of leading them, people apply the principle of “order whatever you want and I’ll do whatever I want”, because, like author Jose Saramago once said, “needs also legislate”.
This summer, Spain has become the international holiday destination for Cubans who enjoy greater purchasing power. The package holiday costs about 2,500 euros and includes the Schengen visa so they can enter Europe, the plane ticket, 4 days in Madrid and 2 in Barcelona, 4 star hotels, visits to the Palacio Real, the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium and the Colonia Guell.
The announcement this week in Cuba to suspend self-employment licenses in 30 different fields, including some of the most popular such as cafes, private restaurants or renting out rooms, didn’t exactly provoke optimism.
“Mistakes are mistakes, and they are our own mistakes, and if we are going to measure them against the hierarchy among us, these mistakes are first and foremost mine,” said Raul Castro, referring to illegal activities picked up on in the private sector of the economy.
The debate has revealed an overwhelming rejection of smear campaigns published in two or three Cuban blogs, where half a dozen gloomy officials self-promote themselves as the ideological guides of all Cuban revolutionaries.
The international community will not be able to establish an effective policy for the defense of human rights as long as it remains influenced by the political and economic interests of one country or another.
Cuban lawmakers who have inspected non-agricultural cooperatives in dozens of different regions in Cuba, maintain that these “increase their contribution to economic and social sectors of the utmost importance; they contribute to improving its members’ quality of life and they manage to satisfy clients’ demands, especially in the construction sector.”
The opposition has always placed their bets, in one way or another, on the United States being the one to destroy the Cuban Revolution and later they would hand over the country to them as a gift for good neighborly relations.
Nicanor is worried because the rumor circulating in his neighborhood that the Cuban government is reaching an agreement with an Arab Sheikh to sell Cuba to him. While playing dominoes and drinking rum with some friends from a nearby apartment block, he found out that they were offering 5 billion USD for the island.
The recently opened Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski, Cuba’s most luxurious and expensive hotel with rooms up to US $1300, pays its cleaning staff US $9.75 a month (in local currency) plus a US $10 stimulus in hard currency.
