A Referendum in Cuba Would Be Preposterous

Publicado el 09-25-2006
A Referendum in Cuba Would Be Preposterous

For a popular consultation, like a referendum, to take place in Cuba, if
its results were to be accepted it is necessary that a series of
conditions that are indispensable and fundamental be in place
beforehand. A consultation of this nature requires a process of public
information and debates that allow the voters to know what is happening,
what has happened during the last forty-seven years and eight months,
and what could happen in the country. And if this debate's goal is to
approve or reject the existing totalitarian tyranny, it is logically and
practically impossible to undertake it without the appropriate climate,
not an overnight thing, that allows free and comprehensive discussion of
the issues involved and the ulterior purposes that could result in an
almost indefinite prolongation of the Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism
imposed by Fidel Castro in José Martí's fatherland.
Therefore, it must be absolutely clear that a referendum in Cuba with
the prevailing situation makes no logical or practical sense and, even
worse, it could serve to proclaim "urbi et orbi" (to the world) that the
majority of the Cuban people approve the despotism that oppresses them.
There could be many people that although intelligent and educated in
many areas of knowledge are politically ignorant and who might have no
idea about this because of the total brainwashing to which they have
been subjected for almost half a century.
All the media, schools and universities and every opportunity for
discussions or private conversations in Cuba are under government
control or subject to the fear or terror that this implies. Therefore,
voters subjected to these conditions do not have the reasonable,
indispensable minimum of knowledge to be able to choose, because they
respond only to the information that the tyranny has been imbuing in them.
There have been cases of authoritarian governments where a referendum or
a national popular consultation has been able to take place under
conditions not necessarily optimal for freedom, but also not under
terrible conditions. There have been countries where there is freedom of
expression, freedom of assembly, an independent press and political
parties that even with the limitations or risks determined by
authoritarian governments have been able to reach the public in general.
But in Cuba, nothing even resembling this is available. A referendum in
Cuba would serve to approve, with an insignificant measure of dissent
possibly arranged by the dictatorship, whatever the tyranny needs to
stay in power.

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