PRESIDENT BUSH’S FARCE
• The Cuban American Commission for Family Rights emphasized its disappointment in Bush’s speech given his failure to mention the travel restrictions imposed in 2004, which may become a factor in the elections.

BY GABRIEL MOLINA

GEORGE W. Bush’s unfortunate October 23 speech dedicated in its entirety to Cuba was so widely rejected that it may have a major impact on the U.S. president’s objectives.

Within Miami political circles it is suspected that it was Cuban-American congress members who organized the State Department farce one week before the United Nations vote on the blockade-embargo that the U.S. has maintained against Cuba for 50 years. Evidence cited included the pauses and gestures Bush made while he read the text of his speech to indicate when the audience was to applaud as he said in Spanish, “Ya esta llegando” (Our day is coming soon), inspired by a Miami musician’s refrain. The supposed solemn occasion turned into a botched farce.

Bush arranged to appear beside Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutiérrez, “born in Cuba”, and Senator Mel Martínez, “born in Cuba”, as well as Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, “born in Cuba”, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, “born in Cuba”; and his little brother (laughter) Mario Diaz-Balart.” Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban National Assembly, identified one of Bush’s objectives: to attempt to pressure U.N. General Assembly member nations to join his campaign against Cuba – a plan that backfired.

There were more pedestrian electoral motivations as well. The event was also about propping up the group of Cuban Americans in Congress who are worried about getting their due. In the Senate, Mel Martínez appears to be weakened after being obliged by his colleagues to resign as president of the Republican Party. In the House of Representatives, the three Cuban-Americans have for years enjoyed a block community vote in their favor during Florida Congressional elections. They have welded political and economic power coming from Washington with mafia threats and the corrupt wheeling and dealing typical of their Miami districts in order to win their seats for the Republican Party. Now, however, they face serious challenges according to The Hill, a capital newspaper that circulates daily when the U.S. Congress is in session.

THE MAYOR’S THREAT

The opposition is going to be significant, according to The Hill, if Raul Martínez, former Democratic Party mayor of Hialeah for 24 years, is convinced to run for the seat in Congress held for eight years by Lincoln Díaz-Balart, descendent of one of the prominent Cuban families that supported former dictator Fulgencio Batista.

“Martinez is exactly the kind of candidate the Democrats would need to seriously challenge Diaz-Balart because their battle would take place in a district where cultural ties matter more than party affiliation,” according to David Wasserman, U.S. House editor for The Cook Political Report.

Florida Democrats think, as do many analysts, that the political climate within the Cuban community in Florida is changing and, therefore, have begun a media campaign criticizing Republican votes in Congress against the expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Joe Garcia, former director of the Cuban-American National Foundation (from which the Cuban fundamentalist group split), and the current chairman of the Democratic Party in Miami-Dade County, has declared that the politics of Díaz-Balart are losing ground. The Republicans respond that their ideas are those of the majority.

García is looking for candidates that are respected in the Cuban community and have separated themselves from the extremist line with respect to Cuban issues, such as, for example, the travel restrictions that allow Cubans only one visit to the island every three years.

These measures, which also reduced visits by other U.S. citizens to a minimum, were demanded by the unscrupulous group that threatened to withdraw its support to Bush in 2004 if he did not intensify efforts to topple the Cuban government. These Batista supporters are terrified as they see public opinion shifting toward a normalization of relations with Cuba.

The Democrats are recruiting candidates to run against Representatives Mario Díaz-Balart, brother of Lincoln, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. García himself is a potential candidate and announced during an interview that he is considering running if he is asked to do so. His colleagues consider Mario Díaz Balart to be the most vulnerable since his district, created by the Republicans to ensure an easy victory for themselves, is now composed of only 39% registered Republican voters, with 33.5% Democratic and 27.5% independent. Martínez recently retired as mayor of Hialeah, an office to which he was elected and re-elected over the course of 24 years. He was the first Cuban elected as a mayor in Florida and it should not be overlooked that Ileana Ros Lehtinen, a Santiago native like him, and her husband, ex-prosecutor Dexter Lehtinen, who he considers “a crazy s.o.b,” stole his one chance to be a U.S. Congressman.

In the meantime, Lincoln Díaz-Balart has let it be known through spokespeople that he will use the federal charges of extortion filed by Lehtinen in 1991 against the picturesque mayor and which led to two trials, in his reelection bid.

Díaz-Balart has also put pressure on Martínez, according to the former mayor who plans to make a decision about running for Congress by mid-November. The Democrats say that the situation is changing, the number of non-Cuban Hispanics is growing in the area and young Cubans are not obsessed with the Revolution like their parents. A survey carried out by Frederick Polls last June indicated, for example, that residents in Díaz-Balart’s district are developing the same opinions as other U.S. citizens. More than 50% of those questioned indicated that health care was their number one priority and 49% to getting the U.S. troops out of Iraq, while only 11% cited changing the Cuban government as most important.

THE FAILED BLOCKADE-EMBARGO IMPOSED 50 YEARS AGO

Bush’s speech has been widely challenged. The New York Times and USA Today, for example, along with the majority of the press, have described the blockade-embargo policy as failed and many have joked about the Cuban-American farce at the State Department.

Significantly, the board of directors of the Cuban-American Commission for Family Rights (CACFR) emphasized in a communication signed by its president Alvaro Fernández, the disappointment the group felt as a result of the President’s failure to mention the travel restrictions he himself imposed in 2004, limiting family visits to Cuba to one every three years.

Silvia Wilhelm, executive director of the organization founded in 2004 precisely to oppose these restrictions, said that Bush valued freedom over stability in his speech. But where is the freedom to visit and help family members living on the island? This lack of freedom has created even more instability; it has divided our families even more.”

Even serious detractors of Cuba such as Vicky Huddleston, former head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana and one of the U.S. representatives who initiated an open conspiracy from this supposed diplomatic mission, wrote in The Washington Post that she did not expect to see the slightest move toward democracy unless changes were made in the rigid restrictions imposed by the United States.

The speech that Cuban-American members of Congress had Bush present did not include any new punitive initiatives; they have run out of ideas, although it did contain many threats of violence, like the famous secret clause in the president’s latest plan. However, as Ricardo Alarcón warned, there is no Bush that lasts 100 years, nor people that can take him. The “day that is coming soon” along with the 184 UN votes, is the end of the Bush dynasty.

Granma 09-11-2007