Oswaldo Paya,Varela Project, National Dialogue and Common Ground

Oswaldo Payá
Varela Project, National Dialogue and Common Ground

“In Cuba, there is hope for change…democracy is for everyone. It can be
born in any
environment, in any culture, in any race, out of any ideology—as long as
there is respect
for human dignity.” ---Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas
In 1997, a courageous Cuban opposition leader, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas,1
launched a grassroots campaign for democracy called the Varela Project,
which seeks to
take advantage of a loophole in Cuba’s constitution enabling citizens to
initiate a national
referendum with 10,000 signatures. Named after a 19th century Cuban
independence
leader, the Varela Project calls for a referendum on democracy: free
elections, free
speech, free enterprise, freedom of association, and the release of
political prisoners.
Achieving unprecedented success in mobilizing open support for democracy in
Cuba’s closed society, Payá and other Varela Project leaders collected
and submitted
11,020 signatures to the Cuban National Assembly in May 2002. In January
2003, the
Cuban legislature rejected the Varela Project, claiming it “went against
the very
foundation of the constitution.” Beginning on March 18, 2003 the Cuban
government
arrested, summarily tried and jailed 75 Cuban opposition and civil
society leaders,
including independent journalists and trade unionists. More than half
were Varela Project
organizers. Despite the arrests, Payá and other project leaders
collected thousands of new
signatures, for a total 25,404 submitted to the National Assembly by
October 2003.
Today, Payá and his organizers are collecting more signatures, as Cuba’s
citizens
continue to embrace the Varela Project’s call for peaceful, democratic
change.
Convinced that all Cuban citizens should have the right to participate in a
transition process, in December 2003, Payá invited Cubans of all
political views—from
political prisoners to members of the government—to take part in a
National Dialogue
on a peaceful democratic transition. As a starting point, Payá prepared
a hundred-page
Working Document2 raising key issues, such as release of political
prisoners, return of
exiles, privatization, and preservation of free education and health
care systems.
From May 2004 to May 2005, Varela Project and National Dialogue leaders
organized hundreds of discussion groups on this Working Document. More
than 3,000
Cubans representing families and civic groups participated. A drafting
committee in
Cuba is currently incorporating the results of these discussions into a
“Final Draft
Working Document on a Transition Plan,” which will provide a broad
platform of
authentic Cuban views for pursuing democratic change.
Payá’s latest initiative, Common Ground (Base Común), reaches out to other
opposition groups in Cuba. More than 70 representatives of human rights
and other
opposition groups participated in the 58-point survey. According to
results released in
November 2005, participants overwhelmingly agreed that Cuban citizens
must determine
their own future, and called for international solidarity.
In response to Payá’s peaceful dissent, the Cuban regime recently stepped up
repression against Varela Project and National Dialogue leaders and
their families. This
campaign includes new arrests and prosecutions, acts of violence and
psychological
harassment, denial of permission to travel abroad and propaganda
attacking the Varela
Project as foreign-inspired.
For his efforts at promoting peaceful change, Payá received the 2002
Sakharov
Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament and the 2002
W. Averell
Harriman Democracy Award of the National Democratic Institute for
International
Affairs. He has also been a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize,
nominated first in 2003,
by former President of the Czech Republic Václav Havel. In 2005, the
European
Parliament again awarded the Sakharov Prize to Cuban dissidents, in this
case, to the
Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco), an organization uniting relatives of
Cuba’s political
prisoners.

1 Oswaldo Payá is also the leader of the Christian Liberation Movement
(MCL), an opposition political
party in Cuba.
2 To read the entire Working Document on a Transition Plan, please visit
the National Dialogue’s website
at http://www.dialogonacionalcuba.org/.

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