Just prior to this weekend’s 6th Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, the Secretary General of the Organisation of American States (OAS), the Chilean politician, José Miguel Insulza, expressed a wish that all the countries of the continent would be present at future summits. This has been interpreted as a clear reference to the exclusion of Cuba and the subsequent boycott by the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa.
As we pointed out in last Friday’s editorial, Cuba was not invited to the hemispheric gathering in Cartagena, mainly because of the opposition of the United States of America, which maintains that Cuba does not have the democratic credentials to participate in the Summit of the Americas process.
Even though the discussions at the Port of Spain Summit, in April 2009, paved the way for the repeal, at the OAS General Assembly in Honduras, two months later, of the OAS’s 1962 resolution that suspended Cuba from the organisation, this agreement made it clear that Cuba’s renewed participation in the OAS would depend on “a process of dialogue initiated at the request of the Government of Cuba, and in accordance with the practices, purposes, and principles of the OAS.”
That is to say, Cuba’s re-entry into the inter-American system will be subject to its government’s adherence to certain basic principles, in particular those enshrined in the 2001 Inter-American Democratic Charter, signed onto by all the active members of the OAS including Guyana, which “recognises that representative democracy is indispensable for the stability, peace and development of the region” and which affirms the link between the exercise of representative democracy and “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” In this regard, the Democratic Charter also champions the primacy of the ballot box and the holding of free and fair elections.
Now, no matter what the Cuban government and its allies might argue about the practice of democracy in Cuba, it cannot be said by any stretch of the imagination that the Cuban people live in a multiparty democratic system, with guarantees of freedom of assembly and freedom of expression, to mention just a couple of fundamental rights.
It is perhaps for this reason that the Cuban government has not acted to resume its seat at the inter-American table; it is simply not ready to pursue full membership in the hemispheric club at the cost of its revolutionary ideals and model of governance. Nor does there appear to be any need to do so as yet, as Cuban diplomacy and regional political tensions have allowed Cuba to enjoy the best relations it has had with Latin America and the Caribbean since its ostracism in 1962.
Why, moreover, should Cuba display any enthusiasm for readmission to the OAS, when one of its members continues to pursue an active policy of hostility towards Cuba, via a 50-year-old economic embargo?
Something has to give in this decades-old game of political chicken. The path needs to be cleared for Cuba to rejoin the hemispheric family of nations if there is a genuine desire in the hemisphere for change and accelerated development in Cuba. Dialogue and communication are obviously necessary, as a first step, to foster a spirit of compromise and trust, but it is, of course, a two-way street.
It will therefore be interesting to see, beyond the public statements in the run-up to Cartagena, whether Cuba’s friends, as well as America’s friends in the hemisphere, make it clear to President Barack Obama that his country’s anachronistic and illogical policy towards Cuba has to change. It is not only counterproductive to the process of change in Cuba but it is also inimical to the USA’s relations with Latin America and the Caribbean in general. Equally, Cuba’s friends would have to undertake to press for democratic opening-up and greater respect for human rights in Cuba.
Perhaps, though, we will have to hope that Mr Obama is re-elected in November to await a new process of engagement. Then, hopefully, with no prospect of a third presidential term and unhampered by the need to pander to domestic political considerations on Cuba, he will have the audacity to put an end to 50 years of American pique and lift the state of siege, thereby removing the justification for the resistance of Cuba’s ageing rulers to a new infusion of ideas and energy, technology and capital.
