“No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise,” Sir Winston Churchill told the House of Commons in November 1947. “Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
And just as democracy is not the perfect form of government, other than acknowledging that it is an imperfect improvement over the many other forms of government that have been tried and failed; we do not hold out that America is a perfect country – far from it. There is much wrong with American society today – depraved materialism being its major degradation. However, the difference between America and the world’s dictatorships is that the American people are free to hold their government in check. While dictators imprison their critic’s, American governments are very sensitive to public opinion.
The Cuban ambassador to the Bahamas, whose first letter is published on this page, wonders why we don’t condemn America for such atrocities as Abu Ghraib, the recent allegations of a massacre at Haditha, the controversy over Guantanamo, the allegations of secret prisons in Eastern Europe, and the like. Americans are their own severest critics. When their servicemen are accused of atrocities – they οΎ are investigated and if found guilty punished. And if the American people don’t approve of their government’s policies whether those policies be domestic or foreign, they have the opportunity to dismiss their commander-in-chief every four years. No, America is not a perfect country, but it is a healthy country. Daily democracy’s grand debate between its people and its government is in progress.
Not so Cuba. For example, the debate now going on between ourselves and Ambassador Wilson could never take place in Cuba. Mr Wilson could write his letters in Grandma, but we would be rotting in some dank Cuban cell for daring to even think our independent thoughts.
There is no free speech in Cuba and no free press- certainly an outspoken newspaper like The Tribune that encourages free speech and a healthy exchange of ideas would not be able to catch its first breath in Cuba.
According to its constitution Cubans have free speech and a free press as long as both “conform to the aims of a socialist society.” And, of course, government decides what those aims are, and imposes stiff penalties on independent journalists. For example, there is a one year jail term for those spreading anti-government propaganda. Translated this means that one either agrees with the government or goes to jail – any disagreement is classified as propaganda. We are sobered to think of how many jail terms we would have had to have served.
There is also jail terms for any written disrespect of officials. For example, anyone criticising President Fidel Castro or members of the Council of State could be sent to the gulag for three years. And as for spreading enemy propaganda – that probably means American opinions – can win themselves a sentence of up to 14 years. “Clandestine printing” is forbidden by the penal code, and failure to identify the author or press of a publication is punishable by three to six months in jail.
Recently, even the Internet – an information tool that is now essential in today’s schools – is limited in Cuba to officially licensed businesses and government offices. In other words, Cuba boasts its education, but that education is limited to what the state believes is good for its citizens. There are libraries, but those libraries are stacked with books that the state believes its people should read.
The ambassador, in one of his letters to this newspaper, says that Cuba does not permit a brain drain and so keeps its citizens at home to repay the state for what it has invested in them.
Here in the Bahamas, particularly in the medical field, our scholarship students are required to work for a limited period of time at the Princess Margaret Hospital to repay their scholarship. However, this is a short period, not a lifetime.
We have a philosophical difference with the Cuban government. We believe that governments were created for the good of the people, not the reverse. And it is because the Cuban people exist for the good of their government that that country’s first woman neurosurgeon has been told that she cannot leave Cuba because the Cuban government has the right to “preserve her brain.”
It is true – Cuba has specialised in education, it has thousands of doctors to distribute throughout the world, but the spirit of the Cuban people can only soar as high as its government will permit. That, obviously, is why so many of them are risking their lives on the high sees and ending up in the squalor of the Carmichael Road Detention Centre.
Editorial from The Tribune
Nassau, Bahamas
