Cubans shouldn’t get too optimistic about any REAL change on the ‘communist’ island. At the end of the day the people who run the country are true socialists, and even those who aren’t, who see the countless flaws and inevitable failure of a totalitarian regime, are powerless to make a change.
Almost 60 years of a communist dictatorship has altered the mindset and spirit of the Cuban people. Most individuals on the island don’t even know what true freedom is and the relatively few who do are old and in no position to make any real difference.
To put it simply, Cuba as a country, and its people, are f*cked. TGO
Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press
HAVANA (AP) — When Cuba adopted its current constitution, the sugar-based economy was being bolstered by aid from the Soviet Union, citizens were forbidden to run private businesses or sell homes and gays kept their sexual identity a tightly guarded secret.
Now a rewrite is on the way as the country’s communist leaders try to adapt to the post-Soviet world in which hundreds of thousands of Cubans work for themselves, American remittances and tourism keep the economy afloat and the daughter of Communist Party chief Raul Castro is campaigning for gay rights.
The country’s parliament is scheduled on Saturday to name the commission to draft a new constitution, consulting with the citizenry and eventually bringing it to a referendum.
Officials have made clear that the constitution will maintain a Communist Party-led system in which freedom of speech, the press and other rights are limited by “the purposes of socialist society.”
But Castro and other leaders apparently hope to end the contradictions between the new, more open economy and a legal system that calls for tight state control over all aspects of the economy and society.
