Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel faces his “coronation” for the second consecutive term by the National Assembly of People’s Power submerged in an acute energy crisis, which has added to the traditional deficiencies of the Castro economic system. For the past two weeks, the queues at gas stations have stretched for hours, parallel to the huge lines at public transport stops, which has forced Cubans to add a new ordeal to their daily lives.
The hell of the tails, from a tray of chicken to medicines, symbolizes better than anything else the economic task of the revolutionary regime.
The great surprise of the current crisis, which is also having an impact on the extremely poor national electricity system (the state-owned Unión Eléctrica reported on Friday a deficit of almost a thousand megawatts, one of the worst in the year) is that Raúl Castro’s successor did not want to assume the responsibility for the new fuel crisis and pointed, without citing him, to the person who for more than two decades has supplied oil against all odds: Venezuela.
“The countries that have certain commitments with us to supply us with gasoline based on the agreements we have have also been in a complex energy situation and have not been able to fulfill those commitments,” the president added. Cuba also receives Russian and Mexican oil.
With the same paraphernalia that Fidel Castro used to make his citizens participate in public accounts, Díaz-Canel assured that the island needs between 500 and 600 tons of gasoline per day, but that it receives less than 400. , the “non-compliance” of others and the breakdown of a ship loaded with diesel upon arrival in Santiago de Cuba, which did not allow distribution to the rest of the country.
Cubans have not only shown their discomfort through social networks, their usual wailing wall, but also at the gas stations themselves. “People who spend hours in line deserve respect and good treatment,” the president warned of the mistreatment suffered by citizens.
The worst thing for all of them is that there are no prospects for improvement in the coming days, as the president acknowledged. “We are not sure how we will get out of this,” said Díaz-Canel, when the ruling party is preparing the swearing in of the 470 deputies who will vote for him unanimously.
The words of the “revolutionary brother” have caused astonishment in unofficial Venezuela, which also suffers constant lines for rationed gasoline, despite having the Creole country with the world’s largest reserves of black gold. “The Castro regime has justified its mistakes and evil deeds for decades by blaming others. Their favorite argument has been sanctions to explain their poverty,” said José Antonio Gil Yepes, director of Datanálisis.
Last Thursday, before the Cuban president justified himself before his country, the candidate for the opposition primaries, María Corina Machado, had warned that Maduro had just sent another ship loaded with oil to help his great ally. “There is no money for teachers’ salaries, neither for pensioners nor for hospital supplies, but for Cuba, as always, there is,” argued the right-wing leader after denouncing the shipment of 1.8 million barrels of fuel, valued at $100 million, “hidden in a supertanker named Nolan.”
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