By Francisco Acevedo

HAVANA TIMES – We’ve already lived through something similar on this picturesque island during Cause No. 1 of 1989 (the judicial case against Colonel Arnaldo Ochoa and other officers), and it seems they want to repeat the story: that a top government official does whatever he pleases while his superiors know nothing.

At last, former Cuban Minister of Economy Alejandro Gil has been formally charged, and the list of accusations reads like a cheap crime novel—portraying him as some mafia boss moving about freely within the highest circles of power (even internationally), while his superiors supposedly suck their thumbs in ignorance.

Well, I’m not the one sucking my thumb, and I can’t comprehend that level of impunity and lack of oversight in the upper echelons. It’s even legally justified in a way, because in this country no public official is required to account for their income—and that’s a license to plunder, an open invitation to let one’s imagination and “entrepreneurship” run wild with the people’s resources.

During his tenure, Gil became a philosopher of fiscal deficit and a poet of scarcity—in a country where sugarcane grows faster than economic reforms. And that’s saying something, because there’s hardly any sugarcane left.

He was trying to get an old car with flat tires to run—or at least wanted his bosses to believe he was trying—while the price of avocados in........

© Havana Times