Share Phoney reforms are designed to tighten Castro's grip on power

Phoney reforms are designed to tighten Castro's grip on power The new constitution will not change the essential facts of economic life in Cuba

The new constitution will not change the essential facts of economic life in Cuba Castro's regime is not planning drastic changes any time soon

Last month, the Cuban National Assembly approved the preliminary version of a new constitution. The document is the work the government’s reform commission, headed by Raúl Castro and the newly appointed president Miguel Díaz-Canel.

This time, the regime has promised full reform, far surpassing the tweaks made to Cuba’s current Soviet-era Constitution of 1976 in 1978, 1992 and 2002. Sadly, however, there’s little reason to believe that Cubans will get any of the real changes they so desperately need.

Article 21 of the new constitution recognises for the first time recognises forms of ownership such as cooperatives, mixed ownership, and private ownership. That is a meaningful difference from the 1976 document, which only recognises state property and agricultural cooperatives. However, what sort of real economic opportunity this will provide is far from clear.

Havana recently published a set of regulations tightening control on self-employed workers and raising fines and allowing property confiscation. According to Reuters, the licensing of business has fallen, arbitrarily preventing more citizens from entering the non-state commerce sector.

Under the new constitution, the economic system will maintain, as essential principles, the ownership of the fundamental means of production by the state and central economic planning.

The government may have recognised the role of the market and foreign investment as a necessity and an important element of development on the island, but only in an effort to alleviate the endemic economic crisis that the country has been experiencing since the fall of the socialist bloc. If the instability in Venezuela — its main ally, and financial backer — continues, things will only get tougher.

There are no changes expected to basic human rights issues — freedom of expression, freedom of association, or freedom of press — while the repression of independent journalists and political dissidents has dramatically increased in the last few months.

According to The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), more than 1438 cases of arbitrary detentions of citizens were reported on the island between January and June of this year.

The regime’s Decree-Law 349 regulates in a more arbitrary manner any activity related to art, maintaining by this way a vast monopoly on culture to avoid any dissident art. There are honourable exceptions to this monoculture such as Bienal 00, the first independent art convention on the island that took place in May of this year.

Despite some opposition from the leadership of the Communist Party, the new constitution does pave the way for the legalisation of same-sex marriage by defining marriage as the union of two people, without specifying gender.

Sadly, the people who, together with the brothers Castro and Che Guevara created the Cuban forced labour camps — where they sent thousands of homosexuals, priests, political dissidents and artists at the beginning of the socialist revolution (the so-called UMAPs) — are the same who today continue on power, and who are going to decide the future of the rights of the people who one day they savagely repressed for not fitting into Castro’s vision of the revolution.

Under the reforms, Article 5 of the Constitution will stay. It enshrines the unilateral leadership of the Communist Party, and the “irrevocable character of socialism”, imposed by Fidel Castro at the beginning of this century to avoid a transition from within the system.

It is pretty obvious that the regime is not planning any drastic political changes anytime soon. So why are they making all the noises of a historic turning point? Because the regime wants to relieve a little of the pressure it receives from outside.

Cuban dissident research groups like Estado de Sats argue that political changes are actually taking place to consolidate the Castro dynasty. Raúl’s son, Alejandro Castro Espín is in charge of the Cuban counterintelligence, while the former son-in-law runs a huge military company.

None of these issues were the subject of public debate while the new constitution was being drafted. It was not even possible to discover what was discussed behind closed doors, and the citizens, who are not part of this complex reform process, will not be allowed to choose the future of their own country. That has been Cuba’s way of doing things for nearly 60 years.

The regime, subordinating the country’s needs to an ideology and its preservation of power, has opted for a reform “inside the revolution”. Don’t be fooled by cosmetic changes. The new constitution is nothing more than air brushing designed to clean up the image of a totalitarian regime in the eyes of the outside world.

Jorge C. Carrasco is a Cuban independent journalist.

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