The Fault Always Lies With the People, or the United States

The Fault Always Lies With the People, or the United States / Martha
Beatriz Roque Cabello
Posted on September 25, 2013

LA HAVANA, Cuba, September, www.cubanet.org — A new program recently
started on television at the end of the newscast at 8 pm. It is named
"Cuba says" and is listed as an investigative journalism program. There
have been four broadcasts, Tuesdays and Fridays, with the objective of
"criticizing" bad deeds.

On two of the broadcasts they addressed problems relating to
construction, and the others talked about health care and transport. But
even if they approach social and economic problems, which show the
existing apathy and corruption, in short, the blame always likes with
the people, for their lack of discipline; or the United States for the
"blockade"; or with some other entity other than the regime with its
inefficiencies.

The functionaries who have to respond to the journalists, look insecure.
Evidently they are under the pressure of those who at any cost don't
want to leave the viewers with the impression that the problems are the
fault of the government. One example: the Director of Transportation
explained that the problem of lack of buses was centered on the broken
equipment and the scarcity of spare parts, while the journalist Thalía
González pressed him to say there were also organizational problems.

In the end, the public saw the problems they already know reflected on
the screen, but without knowing how or when they would be solved.

The last program dealt with housing construction. They reported that up
to 2019, they need to build 29,400 units in Santiago de Cuba, since
there are 73 slum neighborhoods and more than 10,500 houses in difficult
conditions, as well as unhealthy settlements. However, despite the
resources they say have been allocated, after Hurricane Sandy (October
2012), they've only built 1,542 housing units, and by the end of the
year expect to have completed 1,900. At this rate, they won't build even
half of those planned.

On other occasions we have already heard criticisms of this type, and
answers that then fade into nothingness. However, we have to recognize
that the regime has seen the need to admit that the country is in a
sorry state, from all points of view.

Recently, we've sensed a tendency to look for help in the self-employed,
trying to minimize al he problems brought on the country by
centralization and the unified command. However, society, which is eager
to solve its problems of economic stagnation, has taken these small
apertures very seriously, and currently is swelling the numbers of
different types of businesses, so that the regime is grasping at straws,
reversing more than a few of their permissions.

In Pinar del Rio they withdrew the right of private sale of clothes,
because this market has been strong competition for the State, whose
prices are higher and whose customer service is greatly inferior, along
with the well-known scams where the customer is the victim.

They could show hundreds of TV programs with critiques and suggestions
from the people, but the reality is that none of the issues that they
raise are going to be solved until there is an end to the main problem,
which generates all the other problems, which is the same regime, which
has plunged the country into an acute economic, political and social
problem.

By Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello

From Cubanet

September 24, 2013

Source: "The Fault Always Lies With the People, or the United States /
Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-fault-always-lies-with-the-people-or-the-united-states-martha-beatriz-roque-cabello/