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Defiant Cuba enacts new constitution amid US pressure
HAVANA, April 11, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Communist-run Cuba enacted new
constitution Wednesday that recognizes the role of the free market in the
country’s future while championing socialism as Havana faces increasing US
pressure.
The National Assembly met in extraordinary session to enact the new
constitution, ratified in a February referendum after months of public
debates.
“Today our constitution is proclaimed. Our duty is only to it and to
Cuba,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in a tweet.
In a rare speech, Communist Party chief Raul Castro told the assembly the
new constitution “is the daughter of its time and reflects the diversity of
society. It becomes a legacy for new generations of Cubans.”
The new document, which replaces a Cold War-era text, recognizes a limited
role for the free market, private ownership and foreign investment as being
necessary to grow a US sanctions-bound economy riddled with shortages.
Castro, who stood down as president in April 2018 in favor of Diaz-Canel,
warned of tough times ahead for the nation.
“We need to be alert and aware that we face additional difficulties and
that the situation could worsen in the coming months,” he said.
The new constitution formally recognizes changes that have already become
part of daily economic life on the Caribbean island.
Cubans have been allowed to work for themselves or in privately-owned
businesses since 2008, in a sector which now employs 591,000 people — 13
percent of the workforce.
But the political content of the constitution remains largely unchanged
from the 1976 version it replaces, reaffirming the central role of the
Communist Party and the “irrevocable” nature of socialism.
– US threats –
Little has changed either in the relationship with Cuba’s nemesis across
the Florida Straits, after US President Donald Trump reversed a thaw
introduced under the previous administration of Barack Obama.
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Trump has branded Cuba as being part of the “Troika of Tyranny” with its
leftist allies Venezuela and Nicaragua and pledged to increase pressure on
the country over its support for Venezuela’s embattled President Nicolas
Maduro.
Last week, US sanctions targeted vital Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba.
“The tone of the United States has become more and more aggressive, but we
will not give up any of our principles,” Castro told lawmakers.
“We have informed the US administration that Cuba is not afraid and will
continue to build the future of the nation without foreign interference,” he
said.
The US has threatened to revive the dormant 1996 Helms-Burton Act that
permits Cuban exiles to pursue claims against companies that profit from
assets nationalized after the 1959 Cuban revolution.
Washington has also canceled a historic agreement allowing Cuban baseball
players to play in the lucrative US leagues without having to defect, and
threatens to include the island on a list of countries supporting terrorism
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said when the referendum was held in
February that “no one should be fooled” by the exercise “which achieves
little beyond perpetuating the pretext for (the) regime’s one-party
dictatorship.”
The promulgation of the new constitution comes 150 years to the day since
the island’s first set of governing principles were adopted by the
independence movement against Spain on April 10, 1869.
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