Dissidents Urge "Real" Reforms

February 18, 2011


From EFE:


Cuban dissidents urge "real" economic liberalization

Havana – Cautious reforms undertaken by Cuban President Raul Castro are insufficient and a genuine economic liberalization represents the "only and definitive" solution to the crisis affecting the Communist-ruled island, dissidents said Tuesday.

More than a dozen prominent members of the opposition held a press conference in Havana to put forward alternatives to the government's plan to "modernize" the socialist model.

The group included former political prisoners Marta Beatriz Roque and Arnaldo Ramos as well as Vladimiro Roca, son of the founder of Cuba's Communist Party.

"Without wholehearted economic freedom and, with it, the unlimited expansion of the private sector with businesses of all sizes, it will not be possible to resolve the current situation," Ramos, an independent economist, told reporters.

The government plan to expand the scope for self-employment and allow the creation of small enterprises in the hope of spurring productivity "lacks a real basis," according to Ramos, because of excessive regulation and a lack of adequate financing.

In the documents presented Tuesday, the dissidents urge the government to introduce social and political reforms alongside economic changes.

Such an approach could mark a "start on the road to freedom and democracy," the opposition leaders said.

Among other steps, they advocate an end to the requirement that Cubans obtain official permission to travel abroad and an authorization for the open buying and selling of homes an vehicles.

Cuba also needs a new constitution, the dissidents say, as the existing charter "does not permit the social, economic and political development the country requires."