HAVANA, Cuba. – I am not the only one reading the wave of negative comments on social media posts by official media outlets, such as Granma and Cubadebateone wonders if the regime’s leaders ever stop to read them, and even if they do so with the interest of evaluating the true impact of their policies, very far from that triumphalism that leads them to applaud and celebrate themselves, to decorate even among themselves in meetings where we have never seen a sweaty shirt or a raised hand facing unanimity.
Many people are asking this question, not out of naivety, but because leaders and officials are repeatedly heard justifying their decisions with the argument that it is the people who have asked for such a measure, law or decree, even when no one says how the demands were collected, counted and verified, and even when after the negative impact and the evident unpopularity, after the failure, these are not reversed also by virtue of the popular will.
So, nobody has yet defined which is the “people” that the regime listens to; and which is the other “people” whose opinions and claims it ignores because they are clearly not the same, and it is not the one that generally comments angrily, madly, desperately against policies that as a whole seem designed to annihilate, extinguish that majority part of the “non-people” that has been excluded from that “prosperous and sustainable” future promised and reserved only for a few loyal and “blood relatives” meticulously chosen (among themselves).
The current offensive against the SMEs “bad” ones (that is, against those that are bothersome to them because they force them to compete in a market that some “loyal” ones claim to have a monopoly on, or because they have accumulated a certain amount of capital that they want to draw on now that, once again, they are going through another small “liquidity” crisis) is one of those cases that they have tried to justify with the “popular will” but which have clearly revealed themselves to be the witch hunt that they are, since they have been rejected by all those who have seen that, far from lowering prices, these have skyrocketed, as a consequence of the disappearance of products that had begun to become cheaper, as is the case of eggs.
A disappearance that rather results in the monopolization of the import and distribution business by “private” companies in the online sales sector, which have always been under suspicion of being a front for other “state” businesses that have certain links with high-ranking figures in the regime. Thus, a carton of 30 eggs that before the price cap could be found for between six and seven dollars is now sold for between nine and ten dollars in any of these online markets that, apparently since USACanada or Europe, operate legally on the Island.
But “it is because the people asked for it.” And This is how Lourdes Rodríguez Ruiz, Vice Minister of Finance and Prices, defendedthe measure to cap some products sold by SMEs.
That was at the beginning of July this year, at one of the meetings with MSMEs, of which an audio was left circulating on social media and the internet, where the discontent of several business owners with a measure that was later postponed only to pretend that the “consultation” process was being extended is evident. However, despite the almost general rejection, a few weeks later it became effective, costing the closure due to bankruptcy of dozens of private establishments.
I have heard the audiosI know several of those who attended the meetings, and after what happened it is undeniable that none of the opinions against the price cap were heard, nor were any of them answered with solid arguments, so it was easy to guess that once again they were either hiding the true purposes of a clearly counterproductive measure or once again they were preparing to introduce more “errors” into the process of “putting in order” an economy that is becoming more and more disordered by the same people who claim to be trying to “correct” it.
Of all that was said and discussed, without a doubt among the most interesting – as it shows the underlying ill will – there will always be that moment when, seeing herself lost, the functionary of the regime, perhaps in the best style learned in the “School of Cadres”, resorted to the old populist argument that has also served other “bosses” only when they cannot shout in public that they do things because they feel like it, and not when the “people” really ask for it, which normally none of them listen to, unless the popular clamor suits them like a glove.
And the popular will that today demands a return to pre-war prices? the pandemicwhich are the ones that really are in line with the poor wages still in force? And the popular will that has insistently asked for their elimination the stores in MLC Or that they allow people to buy with Cuban pesos? The popular will that still dreams with all its reasons of social justice of a return of the CUC and of that exchange rate of 1 for 25, because even though it was not fair it still made the communist hell more tolerable?
These wills are worthless. Because only those who ask to beat, imprison and shoot the “enemies” are “people”, and only for that reason (not because they really want to) the repressors beat, imprison and shoot; but those who demand food, electricity, water, housing and a decent salary, even if they forget or give up demanding freedom, are not “people”, they are the worst enemy.
