President Ali’s call for changes in Cuba

Mar 13, 2026 Letters

Dear Editor,

So, our illustrious President, it is alleged, stated publicly that there must be changes in Cuba to ensure democracy. Coming from Guyana this is an unfortunate, sad, and sorry statement. Is our President aware of the economic embargo imposed on Cuba, the longest in recent history. In spite of that Cuba has helped the people in southern Africa, in their just struggle against apartheid. They have assisted in the vital area of human development of people in the Caribbean, Africa and elsewhere, by providing top class training in medicine, engineering and other skills, not measurable in dollars and cents. And one may pose the question; is the President aware of what took place in Cuba in 1959, that has been described even by conservative western historians as a popular uprising, that freed millions from their previous suffocation and being second-class citizens.

Our President must know the origins of this word “democracy”, a chameleon term meaning different things to different people. With the might of armies, the power of propaganda, and economic interest great nation states have determined and defined democracy. I am the survivor of the most brutal and savage system of hundreds of years of slavery, during these years the European colonisers in their places of worship and palaces, proclaimed that they were the personification of democracy. In the colonies the descendants of manumitted Africans and indentured labourers were thought about democracy, even as they sought to get a bigger slice of the cake.

The powerful nations proclaimed they were viable democracies, as an excuse to wage war and plunder resources of other people, in every corner of the globe. Thanks to the machinations of the imperial masters, we have been persuaded that the hallmark of democracy is the holding of periodic elections. We have seen in action, this fallacy, this deception, here and elsewhere.

This may seem a small matter, but in a vibrant democracy a government using its awesome authority and boundless resources, would have ensured that a newspaper, Stabroek News for example, would have remained open, so that we benefit from the essence of democracy, which is to have all sides of a story available to “John Public”.

We were thought that the voice of the people, is the voice of God. Unless President Ali is regurgitating the expressions of other folks, he should give the people of Guyana his version of democracy.

Recall one smart alec said, “the democracy we see in action, is demons gone crazy”. Mr. President you are duty-bound to tell us, in clear words, what should happen, or be done to make Cuba qualify to be labelled a democracy, and not a client state. I avoid the tedium of naming dictatorships, masquerading as democracies.

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