|
Cuba Makes for a Bad
Example
Editorial, March 9, 2004.
The Monitor (Kampala). AllAfrica.com.
Let us hope Speaker of Parliament, Mr Edward
Ssekandi frowned upon the recent postulations
of Cuban vice president, Mr Esteban Lazo,
to the effect that his country is a democracy.
When he met the Speaker last week, Lazo
brazenly claimed Cuba is more democratic
than the United States - even though it
is a one-party state.
We recognise that Cuba has extended a
lot of assistance to Uganda in the health
sub-sector and the military institution.
We appreciate this, but Uganda must not
be tempted to be a part of the public relations
machine that country's leaders are mobilising
to spruce up its international image.
It is a sad fact that democracy does not
thrive in Cuba in the conventional sense.
It has also been well documented that fundamental
human rights are trampled upon by President
Fidel Castro's paranoid regime. The people
of that island nation live under repressive
socio-political conditions.
These are not the credentials that suggest
a culture of democratic practice in a country.
Also, when you look around not one country
in the world, which is under the yoke of
a one-party system, can lay a defensible
claim to being democratic. As a rule, one
party states are intolerant of dissent and
the phrase "police state" generally
makes for a good definition.
Under this system of government the law
is abused by the state as an instrument
of coercion instead of being used as a tool
through which justice is dispensed.
The Movement political experiment is a
fair representation of what a one-party
state is all about. The absence of that
crucial element of democracy: freedom to
choose in free and fair polls is just one
of its many nefarious tendencies.
The answer to Cuba's political loneliness
is internal cleansing and denunciation of
its ill-conceived love affair with repressive
rule.
In this changing world the breathing space
for tyrannical regimes is being snuffed
out. Coercive regimes are increasingly realising
they cannot survive in isolation anymore
and this is why they are reaching out.
As Uganda's present leaders deal with the
reality that they can no longer perpetuate
the fallacy of 'Movement' politics as an
alternative to true democratic pluralism,
Cuba (in its present state) is one country
we should not be looking up to.
Copyright © 2004 The
Monitor. All rights reserved.
Cuba
Offers Great Lessons - Mayombo
|
