RIGHTS-CUBA: Dissidents Seek Change, Playing by Rules of the Game

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, May 11 2002 (IPS) - A petition for a referendum on political and economic reforms, carrying more than 11,000 signatures, was submitted to the Cuban parliament by dissident groups Friday, in line with a provision in the constitution.

In a communique distributed to the foreign press, dissident leader Oswaldo Payá said the initiative automatically became a draft law when it was introduced to parliament in line with rules established by the Cuban constitution.

“We are asking that the Cuban people be allowed to express their voices in a popular referendum, in order for the sovereign people to make a decision to start bringing about changes for the good of our nation,” said Payá, coordinator of the committee that organised the initiative, known as the Varela Project.

The petition was handed in just 48 hours before a visit by former United States president Jimmy Carter (1977-81), who will be in Cuba until next Friday.

But Payá ruled out any link with Carter’s coming visit. “We pushed the date as far forward as possible so it would not coincide with Carter’s arrival,” Payá said in a brief interview with IPS.

Promoted by 119 dissident groups since April 2001, the petition calls for a referendum in which voters can express their position on freedom of expression and association, new rules for elections, and an amnesty for political prisoners.

Article 88 of the constitution stipulates that petitions carrying the signatures of at least 10,000 Cuban voters can be directly introduced as draft laws to the single-chamber parliament of this socialist island nation of 11.2 million.

Payá, the head of the illegal opposition group Christian Liberation Movement, said in his communique that “the demand for greater openness” was signed by more than 20,000 people, “although due to the repression, we could not present all of the signatures.”

The initiative was named after Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, politician and journalist Félix Varela y Morales, one of the most prominent thinkers of Cuba’s 19th century independence movement.

“We are demanding that the Varela Project be published” in the state-run press “for everyone to know about it and to decide,” said Payá, who added that the document is not “for the opposition, but a citizen project aimed at achieving rights for all Cubans.”

The activist told IPS that the Varela Project “has its own engine” in Cuba and will not be conditioned on approval by “any foreign personality or event,” although he added that anyone interested in Cuban reality should learn about it.

Carter plans to meet with the leaders of Cuba’s illegal internal opposition organisations, which the Cuban government dismisses as “mercenaries” at the service of the “empire” – the United States.

“We know he will meet with some of us,” but that is still pending confirmation, said Payá.

The text of the Varela Project and a letter from Payá addressed to the president of parliament, Ricardo Alarcón, were received in the legislature by the head of public affairs, Columbié Lugo.

“We were attended with courtesy and respect,” said Payá, who described the Varela Project, which also seeks to secure a broader space for private enterprise, as “unprecedented” in Cuba.

But the Communist government of Fidel Castro sees initiatives like the Varela Project as “shams” fabricated by people in the pay of the U.S. government in support of the policies of “a superpower” against a small Caribbean nation.

But the Varela Project is not unanimously supported by dissident groups in Cuba. For example, it is not backed by the Reflection Panel, an umbrella of “moderate” opposition groups.

“We believe the conditions do not exist for taking steps towards a democratic transformation and opening, based on the constitution,” said the former coordinator of the Reflection Panel, Manuel Cuesta Morúa, of the Cuban Democratic Socialist Current.

Cuesta Murúa said that designing a concrete programme of transformations would require, first and foremost, “the official recognition of the opposition organisations as interlocutors within Cuba.”

“We do not believe the government will accept the legitimacy” of projects arising from “interlocutors that it does not recognise, which are non-legal entities in political terms,” he added.

In April, Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque ruled out any possibility of success for the Varela Project.

The Cuban people “are politicised, with a growing cultural level and growing comprehension of the reality of Cuba and the world, and they are not going to be soft-soaped by a handful of opportunists,” the minister said in a press conference last month.

Castro, meanwhile, has stated on several occasions that Cuba’s dissidents take their orders from the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba, which “brings them together, and pays them, in 1,000 different ways.”

Cuban authorities also staunchly reject any questioning of the government’s human rights record, and points to its well-known achievements in health and education to maintain that the socialist regime that has governed the country for over four decades respects, “like no other,” the right to life, health care, education, employment and social security.

The petition for the referendum was signed by prominent dissident leaders like Héctor Palacios of the Centre for Social Studies, Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz with the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, Raúl Rivero of the independent news agency Cubapress, and Gustavo Arcos with the Cuban Pro Human Rights Committee.

Payá told IPS in May that signatures were collected in every province, with the support of a number of dissident groups. “This is a campaign that was carried out by the citizens, door to door, with very limited resources, and it has grown despite the oppression,” he said.

The dissident leader said on that occasion that the signatures would be presented “with all of the possible documentation, to allow any of the petitioners to be immediately located.”

The Varela Project “is asking for rights for all, and even respects the right of not agreeing” with the initiative, said Payá. He complained, however, that some dissidents who have criticised the project “have behaved, for whatever reason, as a counterpart of the repression, to confuse, provoke, and sow doubts.”