Published November 19, 2011
EFE
Havana – Cuba's Communist Party must play a more dynamic role as a
vehicle of "change and institutionalization" to ensure the success of
recent economic reforms on the island, a Cuban-American scholar says.
University of Denver lecturer Arturo Lopez-Levy told Efe in an interview
Friday in Havana that he was cautiously optimistic about the Cuban
government's steps to allow an expanded role for the private sector but
remained skeptical about the "political institutionalization" of those
reforms.
He hailed the importance of recent measures such as allowing the
free-market sales of homes and automobiles, which he termed a "symbolic
step" that will open "doors and opportunities" to more important reforms
in areas like the financial sector.
Besides the new real-estate market aimed at easing a severe housing
shortage, Cuba's communist government has granted hundreds of thousands
of self-employment licenses as part of its plan to drastically reduce
the number of people on the state payroll.
The reforms are aimed at curing longstanding economic woes that were
further exacerbated by the global slump and a series of hurricanes in
2008 that caused an estimated $10 billion in losses.
Lopez-Levy, however, was critical of the discussion document for a
national Cuban Communist Party conference scheduled for January 2012,
terming it conservative and tentative.
That gathering, in which officials are to review the party's "working
methods," will be held nine months after the 6th Communist Party
Congress in April when the organization approved a series of reforms to
"update" the socialist model.
But, according to Lopez-Levy, the type of change insinuated by President
Raul Castro's reform plan requires a party that not only "wears the
mantle of the revolution, of the historical path (the island has taken
since 1959), but which is focused on the political task of promoting
that reform."
"That involves more significant political changes that do not mean the
(end of the one-party system) or anything of the sort, but do imply a
more dynamic role for the party as a vehicle of change, reform and
institutionalization," the expert said.
Lopez-Levy added, however, that he expects the party conference will
lead to changes in the organization's leadership.
The scholar, scheduled to give a lecture Saturday in Havana at the
invitation of the Catholic magazine Espacio Laical, said a path to a
mixed economy is implicit in Cuba's economic reform plan.
But he said changes to a country's economic model necessarily require
political adjustments, as has occurred in Asian countries of a similar
ideological bent.
"I think anyone who thinks this type of economic transition can occur
without political changes is mistaken. If the Cuban political elite
thinks, through any reading it may have done of the reforms in East
Asia, that that was economic reform without a political shift, I think
they haven't accurately read what happened there," Lopez-Levy said.
In his judgment, the most important changes in Cuba over the past year
have been the Communist Party's tolerance toward different types of
non-state property, as well as the "accompanying" role afforded to
institutions that were once targets of discrimination, such as religious
communities.
"This is a very important step ... a very important indicator in a
nationalist agenda, that you acknowledge potential partners ... with a
distinct ideological vantage point from that of the ruling party," he said.
In that respect, the Jewish scholar said he is "very hopeful" about Pope
Benedict XVI's plans to visit to Cuba in the spring of 2012, saying it
could help remove stumbling blocks to an improved relationship between
the Catholic Church, government and society as a whole.
Asked about Cuban exiles' perception of the "updating" of island's
economic model, Lopez-Levy said there are elements within that community
in the United States who "are taking note of the changes taking place in
Cuba," although in Miami "the negative side that doesn't acknowledge the
reforms' potential" prevails.
"But that's solvable with more contact," according to the scholar.
Lopez-Levy recommended "establishing institutional forms (for improved)
relations between the island and its diaspora," although he acknowledged
that remains a tall order for the time being.
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