Cuba: Plea for "Unity" Among Divided Counterrevolutionaries

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Cuba: Plea for "Unity" Among Divided Counterrevolutionaries

Via NY Transfer News Collective All the News that Doesn't Fit

["Please if we can't all get along, can't we at least get it together?"

begs one gusano of his fellow anti-socialists, or "liberals" as Boadle

calls the counterrevolutionaries here. Since many of them are simply in

the employ of the US Government/CIA via the Interests Section in Havana,

they're used to following orders for money, not in thinking for

themselves. Even the US hasn't been able to buy a "united opposition"

so Palacios will have a long wait. -NY Transfer]

Reuters - Sep 5, 2007

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070905/wl_nm/cuba_dissidents_dc

Cuban dissidents seek unity in Castro's absence

By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - With Fidel Castro's poor health making change in

Cuba seem closer than ever, a leading dissident called on Wednesday for

fractious opposition groups to patch up their differences and get ready

before the ailing leader is gone.

Sociologist Hector Palacios urged Cuba's liberals to unite around a

platform for a gradual and peaceful transition from communist rule to

multi-party democracy. Its first demand was the release of 250

political prisoners and the abolition of repressive laws used to put

Castro's critics behind bars.

"Opposition numbers have multiplied, despite the difficult conditions

in Cuba," the dissident said at a crowded news conference in his small

Havana apartment.

"We do not have to wait for Fidel Castro to die to grow. We are growing

every day," said Palacios, who was paroled in December after serving

almost four years of a 25-year prison sentence for his opposition

activities.

It was the third call to unity in recent months by pro-democracy

groups, who are still recovering from a crackdown that landed 75 of

their more active members in prison in 2003.

Last week, Cuba's best-known dissident, Oswaldo Paya, head of the

Christian Liberation Movement, called on the National Assembly to allow

open elections and guarantee freedom of expression.

Cuban dissidents sense the time has come to organize, said Social

Democrat Manuel Cuesta Morua, who has made two pleas for unity since

April.

FIDEL CASTRO UNSEEN, BUT FEW CHANGES

Castro, 81, has not appeared in public for more than a year since

life-threatening intestinal surgery forced him to hand over the reins

of government to his brother Raul Castro for the first time since

seizing power in a 1959 revolution.

Even though a score of jailed dissidents have been freed since them,

Palacios said acting President Raul Castro had not increased political

freedom in Cuba and real power still lay in the hands of Fidel Castro.

"When that power opens up it will be like a dam when you lift the

floodgates and the water is freed," he said.

Palacios said opposition unity had been hard to achieve due to what he

called a police state that has infiltrated dissident groups and

"divided those who unite."

When Fidel Castro is gone, Cubans will demand political change and not

just economic reforms that his brother has promised to revived the

battered economy, Palacios said.

Cuba labels all dissidents "counter-revolutionaries" and "mercenaries"

on the payroll of its arch-enemy, the United States. They are not well

known in Cuba, where they have no voice in the government-controlled

media.

Paya, Palacios and other prominent dissidents such as human rights

activist Elizardo Sanchez and economists Martha Beatriz Roque,

Vladimiro Roca and Oscar Espinosa Chepe, issued a call to "Unity for

Freedom" in April, deeming Cuesta Morua's initiative too moderate.

"The opposition is less divided than before, but it is still divided,"

Cuesta Morua said. "Unity is not around the corner."

(Additional reporting by Esteban Israel)

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