Cubans Expect Little or Nothing From Upcoming Communist Party Conference

Yoani Sanchez - Award-winning Cuban blogger

Cubans Expect Little or Nothing From Upcoming Communist Party Conference
Posted: 1/9/12 06:35 PM ET

This January seems like an October, a July, a November, anything other
than the first month of the year. If anything characterizes beginnings
it is making plans, projecting what is to come, outlining proposals even
later if they aren't completed. But because we grew up among so many
slogans forecasting the future, today we resist talking about tomorrow.
Exhausted from imagining a distant future that could be delayed five
years or a decade, we no longer want to even predict the coming week. So
we focus on this minute, on an immediacy that doesn't allow us to raise
our sights to look ahead. We live in the moment, because for too long
they made us wish for a far off time that existed only in their
speeches, in the pages of their books.

The next Communist Party Conference is also marked by this skepticism
toward the future. Not surprising, then, are the low expectations Cubans
show regarding a party meeting on January 28, the little that is said
about it in the streets. The trifling comments are limited to an
assurance that "this isn't going to change anything," or the glimmer of
hope that "this will be the last chance for the 'historic generation'."
Less than three weeks before it begins, even the official television
isn't showing any enthusiasm for the event. In the ranks of the Party
itself there are many illusions and more than one militant will turn in
his or her party card if the meeting ends with poor results. The time
"purchased" last April during the Party Congress is about to end. The
political reforms are urgent and even the system's most faithful have
begun to despair.

The most improbable, and yet the most desired, is that in this
conference the first priority would be to put the nation ahead of
partisan interests. But this would be asking the Cuban Communist Party
(PCC) to commit suicide... and they are not going to do that. They are
not going to open themselves to citizen participation without
exclusions, nor are they going to dismantle the criminalization of
disagreement. They bet their power on it. The reforms would have to be
so clear, the change in discourse so marked, that instead of simple
adjustments they would need to erase the slate and start again... and
most likely they will refuse to do that. So, for a long time January
hasn't seemed like January, the Revolutionaries don't behave that way
and the future is a subject only for soothsayers and fortune-tellers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/cuba-communist-conference_b_1194641.html