Cubans discuss Helms-Burton bill

May 31, 1995
Issue 

Cuba's National Assembly has slated public hearings on the bill sponsored by US Senator Jesse Helms and Dan Burton and aimed at intensifying the blockade against Cuba.

These hearings were scheduled by the foreign relations and legal affairs commissions of the National Assembly. Ricardo Alarc¢n, president of the National Assembly, remarked in an interview with Trabajadores that the island's population has the right to know more about the bill and to state its opinions.

The bill presented by the US ultraright has the goal of internationalising the blockade by imposing sanctions on countries, enterprises or persons which trade with Cuba. Its extraterritorial nature has been criticised by five of the seven most industrialised countries of the world: Canada, Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy.

The European Union recently warned the United States that the proposed legislation is totally unacceptable. It also recalled that for the last three years the majority of UN members have voted against the blockade, a result which is humiliating for the United States.

One of the issues dealt with in the bill is that of US property nationalised after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959.

This issue has been settled with other countries in a manner satisfactory to both sides. In the case of the US, that country's aggressive policy for the last 36 years has blocked a solution to the conflict.

This time, to the list of claims by US citizens and companies, the Helms-Burton bill adds the properties of Cuban embezzlers, large land-holders and members of the Batista dictatorship who fled to the US. These people were not US citizens at the time of the expropriations.

In essence, the bill intends to return buildings where there are now schools, day-care centres and other public facilities; housing units which are the property of the population; lands which are in the hands of cooperative members and agricultural workers; and state farms, beaches and other installations, many of which are production centres which belong to all the people.

The public hearings are taking place two months before municipal delegates to People's Power are to be elected in the country's 169 municipalities.

The July 9 elections will differ from the 1993 general elections in various ways. In the previous elections, in addition to choosing delegates to serve two-and-a-half-year terms, deputies to the National Assembly were elected for five-year terms.

In 1993 a national appeal was made, with President Fidel Castro at the forefront, for the population to make a united vote — i.e., to vote for all the candidates for deputies proposed by the electoral districts.

This time, only municipal assembly delegates will be elected, since their terms will have come to an end. In open meetings organised by neighbourhood, the local residents will propose from two to eight candidates. Later on they will elect one of those candidates as their municipal delegate, so there can be no such thing as a united vote.

In the interview with Trabajadores, Alarc¢n said that in the midst of the tensions faced by the country Cubans need to elect grassroots fighters who are dealing with problems that in many cases have no solution.

The mass of workers and political organisations in the country are carrying out an awareness campaign so that the nomination of candidates will have the highest possible quality and so that those proposed in the neighbourhood meetings are the best qualified to carry out the job of delegate.

The goal is to achieve the greatest possible participation in the neighbourhood meetings to choose the candidates for delegates, and subsequently for Cubans to go to the polls en masse to elect their local government representatives in direct and secret ballot.
[Reprinted from Granma International.]

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