Is Cuban socialist democracy over? A question like the one above, on a day when Cubans are called to the general election, with the resulting political implications, might even be “biased”.
With the multi-valued meaning given to words in Spanish, we know there will be no shortage of those who choose to remove the question marks to turn it into a statement. Dots and signs, together with the place they occupy, are very defining in our language …
But our intelligent readers are well aware that I intend to open not an idiomatic question, but a political one, the answers to which are not as simple and obvious as one might think or imagine.
There is nothing more incomplete in this world than any model that claims to be democratic, regardless of the ideological sign it claims to represent. The above, I think, if we could present it as an indisputable truth.
In the reconfiguration of the Cuban socialist model of the 20th century, those who have always been accused of being orthodox communists have given two encouraging signs that they are accepting the unfinished state of their democratic model.
The first of these signs was to settle the debate that took place in the country on the definition of a model for building socialism, adding to it a democratic surname. If it is socialist, then it is already democratic,” some defended, while forgetting the perversions, mistakes—and even horrors—that were committed here and there in the name of the ideal.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the founder of the first socialist state and one of the most diligent theoretical supporters of his ideas, would answer with the assertion that revolutions themselves, as processes, are wise, unambiguous, err and are revolutionaries.
And with the latter one does not need to make an effort either theoretically or in practice to demonstrate it – it is enough what Fidel called dismemberment. Revolutionary projects aimed at building socialism, becoming an alternative to the old and dominant bourgeois-liberal exclusionary and alienating model, also require a rethinking of democracy.
From this gap was born the system of people’s power in Cuba as an attempt to find the only thing that we will be “braggarts” – in the words of Lenin – if we already consider it complete, perfect.
In the midst of the radical structural changes we are experiencing, as I put it another time, Fidel’s idea that “People’s power is power” needs to be rebuilt to modernity.
The true edifice in which we must live in our socialist democracy is where the third article of the Constitution is increasingly respected: “In the Republic of Cuba, sovereignty belongs to the people, from whom all state power emanates. “..
Therefore, it is necessary to continue to reconcile political, state and governmental institutions and our one-party concept with the precepts of popular sovereignty, which especially mark the aspirations of socialism in this difficult century, which has almost swallowed up its first quarter.
It is not lost on anyone that in a world where the “powerful gentleman” decides in these types of campaigns, in our field we do so on the basis that parties are not the nominees, on the merit and ability of the candidates. , and opposing the amount of money or power, and taking into account the widest public representation, is an oddity, to say the least, striking, as long as it does not lead to tedious formalism or routine political pamphlet.
It is good to reiterate that we were elected to the positions of people’s power in Cuba not to “behave well”, but in order to carry out the mandate that the people give us by their vote and which we must observe “with dignity and honor”. capabilities”; and also with what in social psychology today is called the political “attitude”. One is chosen, besides the view, to command.
Another very peculiar sign that appeared in Cuba, among others, pointing to the path of democratic improvement, was the will to build “socialist legal and social justice” expressed in the first article of the Constitution, adopted in 2019. A rare “dictatorship” seeking to build a state of law.
This puts the country in line with its vast and transcendent constitutionalist tradition, since libertarian acts originated in law in the pastures of Guaimaro. Socialism in our country must be inspired by that almost unheard-of courtesy and courtesy, in the way in which they arose.
It would be regrettable, to which we also drew attention some time ago, if ignorance or underestimation of such facts fed a historical heresy, a defilement of the logic of development: that instead of a revolution – the source of the Law – as it happened, by now ignorance or disrespect for the law opens a gap in the counterrevolution.
In a recent debate among civil society representatives at the Casa de las Américas, significant achievements in this area were noted in light of the 2019 Constitution. The new Magna Carta established a number of guarantees that did not exist before, operational channels were created to protect constitutional rights, while protecting some of them that were not previously recognized.
The invulnerability, that is, the longevity of the Cuban socialist model born of the Revolution, largely depends, in particular, on its ability to continue to recreate a new, authentic, liberating, anti-alienative, just and balanced democratic model.
And note that it is not in the form of a question, but rather a statement, not in the least prejudiced.
Source: Juventud Rebelde