Dissidents create an alternative party

Manuel Cuesta Morúa, who is usually described by the media as "a moderate dissident," announced over the weekend that his group, Arco Progresista, or Progressive Arc, has become a social-democratic political party "open to those traditions of liberal socialism and christian socialism, fused in a center-left party, that can offer a better alternative for democratic change and stability" for Cuba. In other words, an alternative party within socialism, composed of AP and three other groups with socialist hues. The announcement appears (in Spanish only) in the cubanuestra website and merits a careful reading, as does Cuesta Morúa's address to the other leaders of the new organization. Cuesta Morúa openly admits that he is betting on the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States to solidify his party's position in Cuba. And he rejects "the cultural models that have ruled our political coexistence [as] useless. Neither Generals nor Doctors nor Enlightened Despotism dubbed Revolution" have worked, he says. "Without the right to control our lives, we're suspended over three failed platforms: a failed revolution, a failed nation, and a failed country." Cuesta Morúa's criticism of the state is unlikely to gain him sympathy in government circles, and (let's be realistic) a multiparty system in Cuba is an oxymoron at this time. What are his chances, now or in the future? I'd be interested in your comments.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.

Comments

[Richard Cheeseman]

What are his chances? Well, he has a good chance of attracting imperial funding.

It's quite likely that after the Bush dynasty the US empire will sell down some of its holdings in anti-Cuban terrorist and right-wing extremist groups and instead be in the market for a nicer, more social-democratically tinged class of Cuban political employee.

[Walter Lippmann]

It's hard to predict the future. My crystal ball isn't what it once was, but so long as Washington continues its open policy of funding opposition movements within Cuba, there is no likelihood that the island will develop a multi-party political system.
It would also be in opposition to the ideas of Jose Marti, who advocated that revolutionary minded Cubans unite in a single party. He called the one he founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party.
Imagine if Cuba or any other country openly declared it was funding opposition political movements within the United States? Would that be tolerated by the United States government?
To ask such a question is to answer it.