“They leave musicians out of work, but the bureaucrats continue,” Silvio Rodríguez complains.

Silvio Rodríguez, one of the revolution’s most international squires, has long made his Segunda Cita blog a place from which to provoke intense debates based on his critical remarks against certain government decisions.

Aside from his defense of the regime, the troubadour has not hesitated to attack the authorities on several specific occasions, such as the revocation of Uruguayan journalist Fernando Ravsberg’s press reference, the suppression of the 2019 LGBTI march in Havana or, even, the inclusion of Radio Progreso on a black list.

The newspaper has been published since the beginning of the year online of the musician boils violently against Task Ordering and sets in motion economic debates in which his followers do not shy away from denouncing the mistakes or negligence of the authorities. Rodríguez has so far published three texts so far this year in which he criticizes the way decisions have been made by the mainstream leadership and in which he makes a very clear case for stimulating small private companies.

“Some in our ‘heights’ are very concerned that people will prosper, make money, become a force with their own opinions and jeopardize the established division of powers”

“Some in our ‘heights’ are very afraid that people will prosper, make money, become a force with their own opinions and jeopardize the established division of power,” the musician himself says bluntly. “Most economists complain that, in parallel with the latest measures, SMEs should have been authorized and the private sector strengthened (I have always said they should be made complicit, I think many could have) , but the ‘that no one touches anything, I can only touch’ they seem to reject that. ‘ Fear of losing the couple, “some say.”

This is how powerful he is in the middle of a string of over 240 responses to the post in which it reproduces an article by the writer and journalist Giordan Rodríguez Milanés, in the orbit of the ruling party until his departure from the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac), entitled The Unfinished Drama of X and the Cuban State. In the text, he speaks of the helplessness of many artists who become self-employed as a result of the ordinance, leaving them with no rights that state workers have, even though they spent their entire lives paying the state to represent them.

Dozens of the troubadour’s followers have taken advantage of the message to protest to the point of outrage against government policies they see as inappropriate, starting with Silvio Rodríguez herself, who has no qualms about saying, ‘They’re leaving musicians without work behind, but all bureaucrats are still behind from their desks ”.

While there are several people who slightly disagree or claim that there are countries where workers are worse off, the author of the text intervenes to continue to express his opinion, replying that the people of Cuba have learned that the state and its leaders think and decide for him while the allowances were distributed, so he used to live without regard to the cost of those gifts.

The debate is also open to monopolies, with interventions arguing that competition would improve the quality of supply. “The only way to improve the quality of bread is for people to buy better bread for 1 peso. Even thousands of audits or sterile or corrupt checks will not make bakers in Cuba make you better bread for 30 consecutive days,” adds a follower of the singer-songwriter.

Another notes: “Until 2020, the state funded the inefficiency of the state-owned enterprise. From 2021, the state decides to stop doing it and make those resources directly available to the population by increasing its income. But the state-owned enterprise, with its nearly monopolistic controls in most of its activities, it has chosen to find a new way to finance its inefficiency (and beware! because inefficiency almost always masks corruption at different levels) through arbitrary price increases “.

“What will I buy myself? (…) Where will I buy it? Given that almost everything was closed, and what was open had nothing to sell. Will this be part of the ordinance? Will it be temporary or permanent? to be? “

“As long as the productive forces are not released by allowing the creation of small and medium-sized enterprises and prices are controlled by themselves through competition, the inefficiency of companies will not disappear, productivity will not increase and there will be no more. prosperity are generated, ”he adds. another.

The high prices or quality is not the only thing that emerges from the numerous comments on the blog of the former champion of the regime. The absence of products has also entered the debate: “What shall I buy? (…) Where shall I buy it? This as almost everything was closed and what was open had nothing to sell. This is part of the regulation? Will it be temporary or permanent? “

The author of the original text is unrelenting in his opinion, unlike the authorities in the comments on his own article, in which he responds to those who timidly defend the way the government has developed the task mandate. After a long tirade of outraged allegations, he ends his message with these words: “I better leave it here and I’m not going. I’m already off balance for the internet. Go ahead, distinguished comrades: stay the country. destroy.”

After this message, Rodríguez returned to animate the debate with a new one post, released Sunday. In this case, the article is by the sociologist Ricardo J. Machado and has a title Task sequence versus reality? Here the author apologizes for the mistakes made in the implementation of the trial, for the difficulties it entails, and urges the government to listen very carefully to the demands of the population in order to make them right along the way. to put. But he doesn’t profile himself when it comes to warning of the dire consequences if he doesn’t open his hand for the small private parties.

“We must tie the hands of the bureaucracy and not allow a parallel government to do its thing. The 8th Congress of the PCC has the floor. It could be the last.”

According to Machado, the government must implement a reform that will boost SMEs, flexibility in cooperative management and “the long-awaited autonomy of state-owned enterprises that the bureaucracy will try to sabotage by hand.” And he continues, “Murillo confirms that the number of state-owned enterprises that could fail is about 450. In my experience, it would double, reaching nearly a thousand. The lack of preparation for management and the mental numbness of many of our entrepreneurs, as a result of almost 60 years of authoritarian vertical structure, it is very difficult to overcome in the short term. “

In addition, the author gives a serious warning at the end of the text: “We must bind the hands of the bureaucracy and not allow a parallel government to do its thing. The 8th Congress of the PCC has the floor. It could be the last. can be.”

Rodríguez, less extensively in his comments on this post, has used the publication to convey the textual message of a retiree who cannot afford the cost of electricity and demands that the government pay attention. In addition, he did not miss the opportunity to respond discreetly but clearly to the text: “I cannot understand how this problem has not been solved, based on the a thousand times repeated expression of ‘think like a country’, which I refer to another. category dare to elevate ‘think like a nation or a country’ ”.

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