The Cuban official troubadour Silvio Rodriguez questioned on Sunday the criticism of Miguel Diaz-Canel to the Cubans who are publicly protesting in the midst of the extensive blackouts who sufferand to whom called “indecent” in an intervention before the press on Saturday.
Without mentioning the ruler, Rodríguez used, as is his custom, the forums of his personal blog Second date For indicate: “I believe that our government makes a serious mistake when it prevents the people from taking relief action. That contradiction will have to be resolved or the people will end up confronting the government.”
“I believe that the complex energy problem has been worked on and is being worked on intensely. I am sure that inventing, taking even from where we do not have. I suppose that many workers in that sector right now are comparable in dedication to the workers in science, health and education,” he said.
“But it is obvious that our way of generating energy has no future. I think that, because it is a strategic issue, of survival, in this sense we have to be radical and even make sacrifices, because our lives depend on it. There is no other than to put ourselves in body and soul for renewable energies”, he suggested.
Regarding the weariness of Cubans, who in some localities have come to enjoy just four hours of electricity on some days, he pointed out: “It is going through so much anguish, and what we could do and do not do bothers so much, that the temptation to blame the Government for everything is latent. I think we should see the positive part of the world, with a lot of negative forces against it, fight back and sometimes manage to move some things in a better direction.”
Using a term that official propaganda uses to encompass its critics, he assured that “the haters are also aware and are trying to ensure that Cuba is not given the slightest respite. Let’s not help them.”
Rodriguez insisted how do you do on a regular basisand in reference to the US embargo, that “the blockade is what prevents us the most, what delays us the most, what confuses us the most. Because constant pain blinds. Knowing that, they made torture a law, so that not even the torturers themselves could stop it.”
But he also commented: “I don’t repudiate the one who can’t take it anymore. I defend the right of everyone to exploit themselves and say what they feel.”
Both Díaz-Canel and other Cuban officials have spent the week offering public explanations and announcing possible solutions to the energy crisis. that the country is experiencing, after the signs of discontent multiplied and reached their climax in Nuevitas, Camagüey, where hundreds of people took to the streets to demand the end of the regime for three consecutive nights.
those protests they were drowned with a strong repressionafter the residents of the Pastelillo neighborhood confronted the police forces, events in which 11 and 12 year old girls were beaten.
Despite acknowledging for the first time the existence of these protests, the president resorted to the usual scapegoat of the regime, and said that the energy crisis “has been taken advantage of by the enemies of the revolution to create discouragement, uncertainty, to call for acts of vandalism, also acts of terrorism, to promote social disorder, disturbance of order, disturbance of citizen tranquility”.
In an intervention for the press after visiting two thermoelectric plants in the west of the country on Saturday, he added that “Unfortunately, there are people who, with quite indecent vandalism, lend themselves to these actions.”
To underline who he was referring to, the official added: “I separate this behavior from the doubts that the population may have at a certain moment, from their demands or concerns that are channeled through the attention systems that we have in the Party, the Government, in the institutions of the Revolution”.
In his speech, where Díaz-Canel said that the government wants “minimize blackouts before the end of the year”assured that “as a result of a first financing that was delivered a few months ago, parts and components are entering the country for the maintenance of several generator sets and thermoelectric plants, which will allow us to advance in the recovery of generation capacities. That will go gradually improving from September to December,” quoted the official site Cubadebate.
“Recently, in the midst of this situation, another financing was given to recover thermal and distributed generation capacities that were not planned; and at the same time there is a whole group of investments in new generation technologies,” he added. .
The ruler did not specify how much has been the sum pledged in such investments.
This contrasts with statements by officials from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, who in the television program of the Round table they assured that serious breakdowns in four generation units that have worsened the crisis of the electrical system in Cuba would mean an investment of around 255 million euros that the government does not have.
However, power outages continue and there is no hope that they will abate in the medium term.