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By Sandra Weiss* (IPS)

HAVANA TIMES – Ever since the Berlin Wall fell 37 years ago and the communist Eastern Bloc collapsed, Cuba has been debating economic reforms to its socialist system. Essentially, the discussion always revolves around the same issues: less state planning, more personal responsibility. In other words, a strong dose of capitalism as an antidote to inefficient and corrupt state bureaucracy.Little has happened since then. Phases of liberalisation and opening up have been followed by phases of tightening and control. Time and again, hardliners within the party, the military and the bureaucracy have put the brakes on. The reason — the reforms fuelled inequality and resentment towards the newly wealthy privileged class. Underlying this was, above all, the fear of losing power and control, and of infiltration by the class enemy, or, in the Cuban interpretation, US imperialism.Throwing money down a bottomless pitSuddenly, things moved very quickly. Last week, the parliament – which had been convened in haste and with a rather incomplete quorum, as many MPs were unable to travel to Havana due to the petrol shortage – passed a 176-point reform programme which observers have described as ‘historic’ given its far-reaching implications. In the process, some of the ‘sacred cows’ of the socialist state economy are being brought down. For instance, there will be no more blanket subsidies in the future, instead, support will be targeted solely at the socially disadvantaged. This spells the end of the ‘Libreta’, the state food ration card that has granted the population access to virtually free food and hygiene products for over half a century, even though, in the face of the economic crisis, it had recently become little more than a piece of waste paper.The second taboo to be broken is decentralisation. From now on, state-owned enterprises and provinces are to be less dependent on the central government in Havana and will be allowed to make their own decisions on staffing and wages. The absurd extremes to which this centralisation had led were captured by directors Juan Carlos Tabio and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea in their 1995 classic Guantanamera, in which a corpse had to be transported from Santiago de Cuba to Havana for burial – that is, all the way across the island, in a........

© Havana Times