Cuba will admit private property in its Constitution – eju.tv

Proposed reform recognizes "the role of the market" but reaffirms socialist principles

The Cuban regime is preparing to legalize its slow transition to a one-party socialist model open to the market. Through the official media, a summary of the draft constitutional reform was circulated, in which "recognition of the role of the market and new forms of ownership, including private property, is added". But it is reaffirmed that in Cuba the economic system "maintains as essential principles the socialist property of all the people over the basic means of production."

The reform was developed behind closed doors for several years in a working group. command of General Raul Castro, who handed over the presidency to Miguel Diaz-Canel in April, but continues to hold the post of Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Cuba, the highest state power under the constitutional mandate, which will not change after the reform. Other new developments will be the establishment of the Prime Minister's Office – currently the President is the head of the State Council and Ministers – the term limits to a maximum of two legislatures – ten years – and the ratification in the basic text "of the importance of foreign investment for the economic development of the country, with the necessary guarantees."

The draft, described in the official press as a " total reform "- in 1992 and 2002 there were ad hoc reviews – consists of 224 articles they have not been made public and will be debated between Saturday and Monday in the National Assembly (unicameral Parliament) and the MPs will vote to approve the call for a popular consultation before its final ratification. For the moment, no deadline has been announced for the end of the process, even if it should be completed before the end of the year.

The concept of private property was eliminated in the 1976 Constitution, written in the mold of the Soviet Bloc Constitutions, although in practice it was outlawed after the so-called Revolutionary Offensive of 1968, with which Fidel Castro the last blow to any vestige of capitalism and radicalized its commitment to the communist model. Since the constitutional adjustments of 1992 – reinforced by the crisis engendered by the fall of the USSR – self-employment has been recognized, a figure that has been promoted, as a coin to the inefficiency of the economy. state economy, by Raúl Castro since he was raised Fidel to the presidency in 2008. In Cuba (11 million inhabitants), there are currently about 600,000 self-employed workers – 13 % of the labor force -; in 2010, there were 150,000. Last Tuesday, the government announced that work permits would be returned alone in December. This growing private sector, which brings the economy to life with private businesses such as restaurants, taxis, inns or beauty salons, has seen the licensing of frozen since the 1980s. ;last summer. With the unlock to start new businesses, the restrictions are made in turn: each citizen can have only one company and the restaurants, for example, can not serve more than 50 people.

Unanswered Requests

has occurred since the 1990s, it is that he has stopped stigmatizing private property. And what is happening now is that it is legitimized, it is given the institutional stamp of saying, "It's here to stay". He badumes to admit that he returned before 1976; not with the intention of restoring the economic model before the 1959 revolution but in order to adapt the country to reality, "says Arturo López-Levy, a professor at the University of Texas, who believes that this step could lay the groundwork for greater economic, social and political concerns in the future. "It's a reform that will spark demands for further reforms," ​​he adds

. Political scientist Michael J. Bustamante of Florida International University says, "There are unanswered demands." In the economic field, the self-employed sector has demanded that its companies be recognized as small and medium-sized enterprises. and it does not seem that the reform in principle satisfies them, and there is an unresolved contradiction in the recognition of the role of the market and private property, but the central planning of the economy is maintained first. "

For the historian Rafael Rojas, the ongoing reform "will give legal status to something that already exists: a socialist regime that opens at least to a non-state sector of the country. economy and society but under the hegemonic control of the state. "Rojas warns that until a new constitutional text is approved and published," the depth of change can not be measured e "and wondered whether non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations will be recognized as legal entities. "This would pave the way for citizen expression," he says. He points out, however, that nothing indicates that this trend exists.

In his speech delivered Saturday before the Union of Cuban Journalists, President Diaz-Canel, 58, showed no willingness to open the hand, for example, in terms of freedom of the press: "Even though it is raining with attempts to return to the past of sensationalism and the private press under new masks, neither the Cuban public media nor its journalists are for sale". "I do not blame it unfairly," continued the president, "I emphasize the open war that is being waged against us in ways that, under the umbrella of better times in the always fragile relations with the powerful neighbor who scorns us [EE UU] climbed the attack of what unites us – the Party – and what defends us – our pressure – continually disqualifying each other and trying to fracture and separate what comes from the same root and growing up in the same trunk. "

The most unexpected of the progress of the reform was the proposal to create the post of prime minister, according to badysts, although its implications are still unknown. The Granma newspaper, the official organ of the Communist Party, is limited to specifying that the president will be the head of state and that the prime minister will lead the council of ministers. The badyst Carlos Alberto Montaner perceives an attempt to "fragmentation of authority", an "administrative engineering" to create a "balance of power" between different sectors of the regime while the model of unitary power s & # 39 exhausts around historical figures such as Fidel Castro (1926-2016) or Raúl Castro, 87.

Source: elpais.com