U.S. ELECTION-CUBA: Opinions Divided Over Prospect of Second Bush Term

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 4 2004 (IPS) - Public opinion in Cuba with regards to what a second administration for President George W. Bush could mean for this Caribbean island nation ranges from extreme pessimism to indifference and even a slight glimmer of optimism.

Although they do not hope for miracles, some analysts predict that a new Bush administration will take a more moderate stance towards Cuba. However, the government of Fidel Castro does not believe there is any chance of a change for the better.

“There wasn’t much to hope for. Both candidates wanted, by different means, to destroy the Cuban revolution,” said Randy Alonso, who hosts the nightly political talk show Mesa Redonda (Round Table) on Cuba’s state-run television.

The programme repeated what senior officials have been saying for weeks: that regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election in the United States, Cuba should expect “more of the same.”

While Cubans on the street could be heard expressing disappointment or resignation, Granma, the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, made no editorial comment on the results of the U.S. elections.

Academics and representatives of moderate dissident groups, meanwhile, do not rule out the possibility of a slight easing of tension between the two countries, now that Bush has safely won four more years in the White House.

“In a second term, the pressure of seeking re-election is no longer felt, and Bush could feel that he has already indulged the right wing of the Cuban exile community and has repaid it for whatever it might have contributed” in campaign financing, said moderate opposition leader Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo.

President Bush is more likely to pay attention now to calls for a more flexible stance towards Cuba, said Gutiérrez Menoyo, a former rebel commander who fought in the Cuban revolution but fell out with Castro and spent 22 years in prison for armed insubordination against the government.

He went into exile in 1986 but returned last year and is still awaiting permission from the government to reside here permanently.

Of the 45 bills involving Cuba that have been introduced in the U.S. Congress this year, 17 were aimed at partially or totally lifting the four-decade economic embargo against Cuba.

An amendment presented by Democratic Representative Charles Rangel to prohibit any funding to enforce the embargo was narrowly defeated in the lower house of Congress.

“In the past, only bills against Cuba were introduced in the U.S. Congress, but today it is no longer completely anti-Cuban, and it has also become an instrument of debate on U.S. policy towards Cuba,” analyst Esteban Morales commented to IPS.

Morales, the director of the governmental Centre of Studies on the United States and a member of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, said that “never before has policy towards the island been so isolated and criticised” in the United States.

In his view, if the current tendencies towards a more flexible position on Cuba continue to gain strength in Congress and among broad swathes of U.S. society, it will be difficult for the Bush administration “to maintain its current aggressive policy” in a second term.

Measures announced by the Bush administration last May, aimed at “hastening Cuba’s peaceful transition to a representative democracy and a free market economy” by strangling the flow of hard currency into Cuba, have hurt Cuban families that are divided between the two countries.

Under the new measures, family visits to Cuba have been limited to just one trip every three years, and permits will only be granted for visiting immediate family members.

In addition, the amount that visitors from the United States can spend on food and lodging in Cuba has been reduced from 164 dollars a day to just 50 dollars a day. And remittances and gift parcels can now only be sent to immediate family members.

But these new limitations may be among the sanctions that Bush could loosen in a second term.

“There is no need for our families to continue to be held hostage by an old embedded conflict between the governments” of the two countries, said Manuel Cuesta Morúa, spokesman for the dissident social democratic group Progressive Arc, in a message sent to Bush after Kerry conceded the election Wednesday.

In the name of that illegal dissident group, Cuesta Morúa said “progressive Cubans, both within and outside of the island, are hoping for a serious review” of U.S. policy towards Cuba.

Cuban purchases of foodstuffs from U.S. companies since that was made possible as an exception to the embargo in 2001 will continue to increase, applying pressure in favour of the triumph of “realism” in bilateral relations, he added.

Just this week, more than 10 million dollars of foodstuffs were ordered from the United States.

The possibility of lifting the restrictions on trade with Cuba, allowing this country to have access to bank loans, and removing the ban on visits to Cuba by U.S. citizens are issues that will be brought up again and again in Bush’s second term.

Sources close to the Cuban government have acknowledged that it is conceivable that one or more of these initiatives will be accepted by the second Bush administration, although they do not believe there is any chance that the embargo will be lifted.

Some experts on foreign policy also say there is no likelihood of a U.S. military attack on Cuba. Last year, fear of that possibility grew as Washington began to carry out its strategy of “pre-emptive war” against countries that it deems “sponsors” of terrorism, which include Cuba.

But there are also sceptics who say anything, no matter how far-fetched or irrational, can be expected of Bush.

Sociologist Aurelio Alonso said a second term of Bush’s “fanaticism” could be even worse for Cuba and the world than the first, because of the freedom the government will have to carry out its plans “with all stops pulled out.”

In his view, it is likely that “plans for intervention” will be reconsidered under the new conditions.

“Cuba will continue to be like a target on the firing range that is lit up 24 hours a day as long as this administration is in the White House”, and Cubans should “be prepared to live for four more years in a state of maximum tension,” he added.