No one signs the 'Cuban Youth’s Statement'

No one signs the 'Cuban Youth's Statement'
PEDRO CAMPOS | La Habana | 26 de Junio de 2017 - 11:43 CEST.

The official newspapers Granma and Juventud Rebelde recently published
the Cuban Youth's Statement in response to the recent speech by US
president Donald Trump and his announcement of a change in his country's
policy towards Cuba.

I shall not dwell on what was announced or its arguments. Rather, I want
to draw my readers' attention to the impersonal nature of the Statement.
No one and no thing - no person, and no organization - signed it. In
this it resembles statements issued by the "Revolutionary Government,"
in that no one knows who signs, or represents, or chooses them.

This type of document is one of the instruments traditionally wielded by
Fidel and Raúl Castro to draw the political line that all the
institutions of the "Revolution" must toe: the Communist Party of Cuba
(PCC), the Union of Young Communists (UJC), student organizations and
those of intellectuals, etc.

The absences of any names responsible for what was expressed, this
"impersonalization," manifests a total lack of respect for the very
institutions created during the revolutionary process, its designated
leaders, and, particularly, the people of Cuba, who were not consulted
at all. In this case it is an act of disrespect towards all of Cuba's
youth, which is comprised of more than those who actively participate,
whether voluntarily or obligatorily, in the organizations subordinated
to the PCC.

It is well known that such policies are often handed down from the very
top, but are not even supported by the small cadre of leaders chosen by
the elite, and that such announcements, when issued by subordinate
bodies, are not always well received by the "revolutionary leadership."
Thus, this is one way to solve this problem.

In fact, these statements are part of the kind of manipulations to which
we have become accustomed from the Cuban government.

It really should be ascertained how many young people would be willing
to sign this or any other statement made in their name, without any
pressure. It is also a way of hiding the true levels of support the
Party-State-Government enjoys.

On the first page of Juventud Rebelde, an extension of the UJC, there
appears another similar document entitled the Statement by the
Federation of High School Students, again signed by no one, including
its National Bureau.

This is part of el fidelismo's traditional tendency of speaking on
behalf of Cuba, of the Cuban people, and of Cuba's youth, one it has
always fomented in an effort to give the impression that the
leadership's political stances enjoy broad popular support.

However, even the slightest analysis of the statements reveals that they
were not approved by the leaders of the organizations in question. There
appear no signatures or names of the leaders of the UJC, the University
Student Federation (FEU), the High School Students' Federation (FEEM);
that is, the youth organizations of the PCC. They simply do not even
count on them anymore.

Those in charge of state socialism, who carry in their DNA the
information for their own self-destruction, do not know, or refuse to
recognize, that this process of hypercentralization, taken to an
extreme, is a sign of its impending doom.

The greater the centralization, the less democracy, and less popular
support for the system. And this is true in proportion to the economic
and political power concentrated in an elite that increasingly distances
itself from the people, thereby, unknowingly, digging its own grave.

Source: No one signs the 'Cuban Youth's Statement' | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1498470203_32129.html