CU ValeraProj

Varela Project Offers False Hope of Change in Cuba 
USA Today - May 24, 2002 - by DeWayne Wickham 

HAVANA--Roberto Alarcon didn't just anticipate the first question he got during a news conference with some black journalists from the United States; he relished the chance to answer it. 

"What happens now within your parliamentary process?" he was asked about the Varela Project, an effort by a small group of political dissidents in this country to use a voter initiative to bring democratic change to Cuba. 

The organizers hope to employ the constitution Fidel Castro's regime adopted during the 1970s to undo Cuba's 43-year-old Marxist system. For many of Castro's enemies in the United States, the project is the flip side of the mostly positive press Cuba got during former President Jimmy Carter's visit here earlier this month. 

The question that was put to Alarcon, like much of the media attention Cuba has gotten recently, was rooted in a belief that this nation's communist regime governs by fiat and lacks popular support. The 11,000 signatures delivered to Cuban officials shortly before Carter arrived in Havana for his six-day visit, the petition drive's supporters contend, meet this country's constitutional requirement for putting their call for democratic reform up for a vote. 

Carter bought into this idea when, during a live televised address to the Cuban people, he pressed the Castro government to treat it seriously. And when President Bush gave a major policy speech on Cuba a few days later, he said "if that referendum is allowed, it can be a prelude, a beginning for real change in Cuba." 

But none of this caused Alarcon to pause when the question was put to him. 

"I challenge you to show me just one constitution of any country that can be modified at the request of some citizens," he said. "I have found many constitutions in the Western world that can be modified, but none that recognizes a citizens' initiative." 

He's right of course. 

For all their democratic fervor, the founding fathers of the United States didn't give individual citizens the right to amend our Constitution by means of a voter initiative. No amount of voter signatures on a petition can compel such a vote. Under our system, a constitutional amendment must be initiated by Congress, signed by the president and ratified by state legislatures. While some states permit voter initiatives, our federal government does not. 

More to the point, Alarcon said there is no provision in the Cuban constitution that permits people to petition a vote on a 
constitutional amendment. Backers of the petition drive are attempting to merge -- and misinterpret -- several unrelated articles 
of Cuba's governing document. 

Bush and Carter apparently gave this point little thought, as has just about everyone else who has jumped on the Varela Project bandwagon. 

There's no doubt in my mind that Cuba would benefit from some changes in governmental structure and political and economic systems. Just how much change is needed I don't know. But short of foreign intervention it will have to be initiated by its government, not dissidents who are cheered on by leaders, past and present, of a country that has waged economic war on Cuba for four decades. 

The Varela Project is a nonstarter. The longer people in the United States pin their hopes for a change in Cuba's system on that dead letter, the longer it will take for democratic change to come to this island nation. 

The time has come for the United States to engage Cuba in the same way that it has engaged Vietnam and China. If we can have normal diplomatic relations and economic exchange with these communist states -- nations with which the United States fought wars that took tens of thousands of American lives -- we should be able to work out our differences with Cuba. 

That we haven't done so is a failure of U.S. diplomacy that stalls any real chance Cuba has for democratic change.