Fernando Ravsberg

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”.

“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.