Madrid/“Resigning is not part of our vocabulary,” Miguel Díaz-Canel told Kristen Welker, host of the Meet the Press program on NBCNewsin the preview of a interview which will be broadcast in its full version next Sunday. The last time a Cuban leader was interviewed by this American television network was in 1959, when Fidel Castro attended precisely that same program.
The clip begins with a moment of high tension between the president and the interviewer. “Would you be willing to resign in order to save Cuba, the people of Cuba?” Welker asks him. Díaz-Canel, oblivious to the critical questions, spends more than a minute refuting the journalist, insisting on whether he raises these types of questions to other presidents, whether he does so on behalf of the State Department and whether he would ask them to Donald Trump, apparently ignoring the bad relationship between the US president and NBC. Welker, undaunted, clarifies what everyone knows: “I ask the president very difficult questions.”
Once the issue has been resolved, Díaz-Canel gets into the matter. “In Cuba, the people who are in charge and in charge of the Government are not elected by the Government of the United States nor are they mandated by the Government of the United States. We are a sovereign, free State. We have self-determination, we have independence and we do not submit to any design of the Government of the United States,” he argues.
We are a sovereign, free State. “We have self-determination, we have independence and we do not submit to any design of the Government of the United States,” he argues.
Next, the president defends his simple origins and vindicates the election system in Cuba. “Any of us, to occupy a responsibility, has to be elected at the base in an electoral district by thousands of Cubans and, later, the Cubans who represent those others in the National Assembly of People’s Power, elect those positions in indirect voting, as is the case in other countries in the world,” he repeats.
It does not clarify, however, that it is impossible to be elected if you do not belong to the Communist Party or one of the organizations endorsed by the regime. On the contrary, the Single Party claims. “When we assume a responsibility, we do it neither for a personal ambition, nor for a corporate ambition, nor even for a party position, because our party is not electoral. We do it for a mandate from the people and the concept of the revolutionaries is not to give up.”
Díaz-Canel, despite being fully aware that he is not a popular leader – unlike his more charismatic predecessors – assures that the population can show him the exit door. “If the Cuban people understand that I am incapable, that I am not at their level, that I do not represent them, that is the one who has to say whether I should be in the leadership or occupy the position of president or not,” said the man who governs a country in which criticizing him, personally, constitutes a crime of “propaganda against the constitutional order”, punishable by high prison sentences.
The president continues by saying that policy in Cuba is decided by collegiate bodies and that in no case can the United States demand anything from him, especially when it comes to a country that has pursued a “hostile” policy against the Island for decades. “They have no morals even to say that they are concerned with the situation of the Cuban people and that the Cuban Government is the one that has brought Cuba to this situation when they have all that responsibility,” he continues, and urges Washington to look at itself critically and see “how much what they have done in politics has cost the people of Cuba in suffering, in limitations, and in how much they have deprived the North American people of a normal relationship with Cuba.”
Díaz-Canel has maintained, as in all his latest interventions, that the regime is willing to dialogue, as long as it is not conditioned to changes in the system. “We would not demand changes to the North American system, about which we have endless doubts and endless criticism,” he argues, and asks that the conversations revolve around what can unite both countries. “Once again, I repeat, to avoid confrontation and have a future for both peoples of benefit, relationship, friendship and also solidarity,” he closes.
The fragment of the interview has been broadcast coinciding with the message that the president sent to the Second International Conference on Unilateral Coercive Measures, held in Geneva, in which he once again denounces the “suffocation” to which the United States subjects the Island. Cuba is the victim of a prolonged collective punishment that seeks to bring its people to their knees due to hunger, diseases and severe lack of basic supplies,” said in a video.
“Cuba is the victim of a prolonged collective punishment that seeks to bring its people to their knees due to hunger, disease and severe shortages of basic supplies.”
The president reviewed some of the consequences derived, in his opinion, from the worsening of the energy situation following Trump’s oil blockade. Among them he cited the suspension of surgeries for more than 96,000 people (11,000 minors included), 19,000 patients with oncological or hemodialysis treatments at risk, lack of gas and water and industrial production at a minimum. “What right does the world’s main economic power have to commit such abuse against a small country?” Díaz-Canel questioned, describing the situation as a return to “barbarism and vassalage.”
“It is impossible to account for the physical and psychological exhaustion, the daily deprivation, the postponement of dreams and the media war to which a noble, resilient and supportive people like ours are subjected, just out of evil,” he alleged, and also dedicated a few minutes to thanking those who have chosen to be by his side, such as Mexico or Russia, coinciding precisely with the announcement that a new oil tanker from that country will arrive to the Island, although Moscow has not indicated on what date.
