Columnistas invitados/Guest columnists

by Caroline Vernaillen  

When it comes to direct democracy, we often look at the local level. The reasoning being that it is simply more feasible for citizens to take influence when it comes to well-defined, nearby issues. But democratic participation matters on all levels, even where it might be harder to organize. In times of unprecedented global challenges, that has to mean that citizens also get a voice on the global level. So quid United Nations?

The United Nations (UN) have traditionally regarded themselves as a collection of member states and citizens are exclusively represented by their governments, elected or unelected, there. Democracy International, Democracy Without Borders and CIVICUS, with the support of Mehr Demokratie, have started working on the idea of a UN World Citizens’ Initiative as a means of moving from mere representation to participation at the UN.

The idea in itself is not as radical as it may sound. There are powerful examples in the European Citizens’ Initiative and existing mechanisms at the World Bank and the International Criminal Court. Moreover, even late UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his Millennium Report pushed for a more democratic UN, with more avenues of participation.

I first saw the intriguing lotus effect in a lotus flower lily pad in Laos while on a trip throughout Southeast Asia Scientists refer to the lotus effect as the self-cleaning properties that are the result of ultra hydrophobicity where dirt particles are picked up by water droplets due to the nanoscopic architecture of the lotus leaf.

A few days earlier, we had visited one of infamous killing fields of Pol Pots’ fanatical communist ideology that resulted in the genocide of close to twenty five percent of the Cambodian population in barely three years. Emotionally, the serenity of the lotus effect contrasted with the earlier somber experience of the killing fields, and I wondered why the atrocities committed by communist regimes simply do not seem to “stick” in the minds of supporters. Collectivists seem to have developed their own lotus effect that self-cleanses the murderous history of their ideology.

The Black Book of Communism offers a conservative estimate of one hundred million innocent individuals murdered by Marxist socialists in the 20th century. To this, we can add the approximate twenty million victims of Hitler’s National Socialists. The landscape is always the same, whether it depicts the China of Chairman Mao, Kim Il Sung's Korea, Vietnam under Uncle Ho, Cuba under the Castros, Ethiopia under Mengistu, Angola under Neto, Afghanistan under Najibullah, and others.

But the horrific images of this murderous collectivist landscape are painted over with dismissive brushstrokes of exculpation where the blame resides not with collectivism, but with those opposing it. Nothing sticks. Why isn’t’ collectivism judged by its outcomes?

As St. Augustine pointed out in a book he wrote as he watched the Roman Empire collapse around him, we, Christians, are citizens of both the City of God and the City of Man. We do well to thank God that the City of Man where we dwell is the United States of America and not the Rome that sent Christians to the lions. God has indeed shed his grace on this land of ours. We enjoy many blessings here, not the least being our freedom of religion, guaranteed by the Constitution’s First Amendment.

Having a dual citizenship — one in the City of Man by birthright or naturalization, the other in the City of God through baptism — can bring about tensions. No surprise here — but thank God that our forefathers, in establishing our republican form of democracy, did not pretend that they were building heaven on earth. In the 20th century, dreamers of that ilk — men like Stalin and Hitler and Castro — ended up making their nations hells on earth.

Nevertheless, there are inevitable tensions for any City built by men, even a city that shines, as it were on a hill, as a beacon of liberty like our United States of America. For any City built by fallen men will inevitably reflect man’s fallen nature. 200 years ago, slavery was written into the constitution and of course women could not vote. More recently, the right to abortion has been read into our Constitution by our Supreme Court judges. 

El modelo económico de la isla ha demostrado ser ineficaz y la ha mantenido supeditada a ayudas financieras de otros países. La mejor manera de impulsar el desarrollo es profundizar reformas que permitan una relativa libertad de mercado, como en China y Vietnam."

La constante fundamental en los sesenta años de la economía socialista de Cuba ha sido su total incapacidad para generar un crecimiento adecuado y sostenible sin ayuda ni subsidios considerables de una nación extranjera, para poder financiar sus importaciones con sus propias exportaciones. La historia de esta dependencia económica comenzó con España en la época colonial, continuó con Estados Unidos durante la primera república, se expandió de manera significativa con la Unión Soviética y, finalmente, con Venezuela desde el inicio de este siglo.

En los treinta años que transcurrieron entre 1960 y 1990, la Unión Soviética le concedió a Cuba 65.000 millones de dólares (el triple del total de ayuda financiera que le entregó la Alianza para el Progreso del presidente estadounidense John F. Kennedy a América Latina), mientras que, durante su apogeo en 2012, el comercio, los subsidios y la inversión de parte de Venezuela alcanzaron un total de 14.000 millones de dólares, cerca del 12 por ciento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB).

A pesar de los extraordinarios subsidios foráneos que ha recibido, la economía cubana ha tenido un desempeño deplorable. En los últimos siete años, ha crecido una tercera parte de la cifra oficial declarada necesaria para un crecimiento adecuado y sostenible, mientras que la inversión ha sido una tercera parte de lo requerido. La producción de los sectores industrial, minero y azucarero está muy por debajo del nivel de 1989, y de los trece productos clave de la agricultura, la ganadería y la pesca, once han reducido su producción. Hoy en día, Cuba está sufriendo su peor crisis económica desde la década de los noventa.