Posted on Fri, Feb. 10, 2006
CUBA
Walesa warns exiles about power vacuum
In Miami to offer lessons about Poland's transition to democracy two
decades ago, Lech Walesa tells Cuban exiles they should prepare for the
worst.
By OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@MiamiHerald.com
Former Polish President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa, the
electrician whose working-man heroics helped bring down communism in
Eastern Europe, expressed a humor-laden dose of solidarity with Miami's
Cuban exile community Thursday.
Walesa told the powerhouse crowd of about 200 -- which included mayors
and Miami-Dade county commissioners, along with Emilio Estefan, Florida
House Speaker-elect Marco Rubio and Brothers to the Rescue founder Jose
Basulto -- that Cubans here and Cuba must be ready for a worst-case
scenario after Fidel Castro.
''You should be prepared for when it happens, with well-structured ideas
of what to do, because there could be anarchy,'' he said through a
translator. ``Anarchy is worse than anything else.''
Walesa, founder of the Solidarity movement, led a nonviolent revolt
against Poland's communist system in the 1980s. He said the labor-union
led movement was fueled in no small part by the rise of Pope John Paul
II, a Polish priest named to the Catholic Church's top post in the late
1970s, giving hope to Poland's largely Catholic populace.
Walesa seemed to take a shot at the U.S. government's attempts to bring
freedom and democracy to Cuba after 47 years of Castro's rule, even
hinting that Cuba is still communist by design.
''I start thinking that many Americans want to keep Cuba as a museum of
Marxism in this hemisphere and that's why it has lasted so long,'' he
said at the breakfast hosted by Miami Dade College at Miami's Biscayne
Bay Marriott.
`I AM A REVOLUTIONARY'
To prepare the audience for his unorthodox views, Walesa announced a
disclaimer: ''If someone doesn't like what I say, well, understand that
I am a revolutionary.'' The theme of his speech was the need for ''moral
politics'' in a global economy.
Walesa, whose silver hair and mustache are just a shade lighter than
they were in the 1980s, is in Miami with his wife and daughter, for
several events planned through Monday. The former electrician may not
have the intellectual polish of other former Eastern European leaders
who fought off communism. Nevertheless, Walesa is known for holding to
his convictions in the face of Soviet oppression.
On the electronic billboard recently erected by the U.S. Interests
Section in Havana, for instance, one of the ''freedom'' blurbs that
Cubans could read was a quote from Walesa: ``Deep faith eliminates fear''.
In his speech Thursday -- and answering questions from the audience and
reporters later -- Walesa offered few specifics for a transition to
democracy in Cuba.
Instead, he focused on the need for ``moral politics.''
He acknowledged that the United States is a military and economic
powerhouse, but said ''there is something that is missing, moral
politics.'' He said that one of the biggest problems facing the world is
that it is now at the mercy of globalization but is still using ``old
systems.''
`OUR DRAMA'
''Our drama is that we have new times but are still thinking in the old
way,'' he said.
Speaking of Castro, he said, ``I feel Castro has already lost, and if he
had some honor or courage, he would step aside.''
Asked whether the tight U.S. travel restrictions that prevent Americans
from going to Cuba were helping or hurting attempts to democratize the
island, Walesa dodged the question: ``I see both issues and both sides.''
Walesa will be at the University of Miami on Monday to address a panel
about the examples Poland's transition can give Cubans.
''There is a lesson to be learned from Poland,'' said UM Professor Jaime
Suchlicki, who heads the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.
``In Poland three factors coalesced: Solidarity and its labor movement,
the Catholic church and U.S. support.''
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/cuba/13834794.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment