Cuba may have “elections,” but the communists are a long way from abandoning their dictatorial control on things, including letting foreigners get too close to see how big a farce a Cuban political campaign really is.
Two Europeans, one a Czech, the other a Slovak, who traveled to the island last week to monitor the elections, learned that this weekend.
They were arrested in Santa Clara on Sunday, a day after attending a conference, organized by independent journalist Guillermo Fariñas, on “the characteristics and conditions that elections have to have to be considered transparent and clean.”
For the dictatorship, that does not include letting yourself be scrutinized by outside observers.
Immediately after their arrest, the Europeans were taken to the airport and loaded onto a plane for Paris.
Cubans who dare to try to hold their government accountable, are not treated so kindly.
They don’t get to leave the island. By all accounts, Fariñas, who on Sunday urged Cubans to boycott the elections, was tonight still under house arrest.
No matter how you spin it, this most recent election “campaign” in Cuba, and the accompanying reports of “debates” among Cubans on how to reform the current system, are a farce, because no matter how exciting the rhetoric, the communists are still in control. They can allow the trappings of democracy, but that is all they are, a trap that at any moment, the dictatorship can spring to remind Cubans, and the world who really has the power.
In a true democracy, the legitimacy of the governor comes from the people, but in Cuba, the people scare the hell out of those “in charge.”
The regime will allow “campaigning” and “debates,” but only on its own terms, only if at the end of day, it legitimizes the dictatorship, and allows it to tyrannize another day.
Scrutiny, whether by some Europeans or truly patriotic Cubans like Fariñas, is not part of the plan.
…an island on the net without a bearded dictator
