Aleksander Kwasniewski, the President of the RP during the years 1995 – 2005

Mr. President, Prime Minister, and Ladies and Gentlemen:

This conference is a definite proposal for countries which are experiencing difficult conflicts and inner divisions in order to speak to one another independent of the differences of backgrounds, historic partitions, and roads which have led to freedom and sovereignty – to democracy. When we started this conference, Ambassador Rey said that for him the meeting of such different people in one place suggests Polish maturity. And in this spirit, we would like to also propose a solution for countries which are standing at a crossroads. We can certainly ask if in Poland our own matters are not lacking or that problems of our region are not lacking – Central and Eastern Europe. Why are we worrying about a distant Cuba? - we are speaking about a country in which a part of us has not even had the opportunity to be there? Neither President Walesa had been invited to Cuba nor had I been invited there throughout my 10-year candicady. Political contacts between Poland and Cuba during the last 70 years took place on relatively low rungs, even if at all they had place. The response to why we are speaking about Cuba in Warsaw today and not about other hot topics which dominate the media is very fundamental. Poland apparently is a country not only professing the fundamentals of solidarity but also promoting the principle of solidarity in international relations. We want to be in solidarity with those countries which can take advantage of our support and which we want to help in gaining freedom - in building democracy. Cuba is this country.

Solidarity is a word which today is associated with Poland, but the beginning of this long history can be observed even in the slogan “for our freedom and yours” – an invocation, which has animated Poles throughout hundreds of years to be present on the front of hot-heated debates and wars which had taken place in the world. We are, therefore, speaking about Cuba because we want to be in solidarity; because we are convinced that our experiences can be useful in solving the problems of Cuba.

Cuba is undoubtedly a country which in full belongs to an epoch of the past. President Walesa calls the XX and XXI centuries – the century of globalization. Cuba is part of the 20^th century history in an ideological dimension. Today it is difficult to find similar ideological outdated thinking. North Korea only comes to mind. It would certainly be difficult to name the other countries - in countries which we also treat far from non-democratic, but some kind of form of democratic processes has some place. Cuba is not chronological. It is not chronological with its system, with its ideology, which is a mix of communism, Stalinism, Caribbean culture, Castroism, and therefore, everything which has created an entirely unavoidable dimension of Cuban ideology throughout the last 50 years. Cuba is not chronological with restricted growth which one party has been governing for 48 years. Until not too long ago Cuba had been original because the two brothers stood on her forefront. Presently it stands before a great question about its future.

If we are meeting in Warsaw and we are speaking about Cuba, it is because our concern results from two beliefs. First of all, Cuba is close to all of us and needed. The world can not turn its back on Cuba at such an important historical moment. On the other hand, we are afraid that Cuba will not become a source of conflict, and that the ending of this unchronological system does not mean a revolution as well as the internationalizing of this conflict at least in Latin America and perhaps, most of all, in the Caribbean. From this discussion, we have a goal in finding the solution of peace and promoting communication. Hence, there is the inevitability of helping environments heading towards freedom through understanding with other political groups as well as the government.

This task is extraordinarily difficult and that is why at the same time difficult for a one-sided response. Polish experiences can be useful for Cuba, but only in an extraordinarily restricted sense. Firstly, we have beginning from geography, an island which is always, in terms of access, more difficult than in the case of a country which is in the depths of a continent such as, at the very least, was Poland. Secondly, we have an extrinsic situation which in Latin America is unfavorable for the present Cuban regime. The last democratic elections in which the results cannot be questioned clearly shows that the populist idea, the left wing with left-wing inclinations as well as the fascination with Cuba and Fidel Castro is as fully strong as in Venezuela where H. Chavez won but also in Bolivia where Morales won, in Nicaragua where Ortega won in the last election as well as in Ecuador. In Mexico, the difference in the results between the fan of the market economy and the representation of a more populist thinking is not even one percent.

We have to realize that we are speaking about a situation of a country and its surroundings where the fascination of the Castroism ideology is relatively extensive. She will too have influence on the next sequence of events. About the future of the island, other important factors will also decide such as the great neighbor, the United States. America in terms of its very democratic character is a country living from election to election where Cuban emigrant votes are important. Cuban emigration in large part is very radical in its postulates. The building of its true American-Cuban relations after the death of Fidel Castro seems to be an extraordinarily important and difficult task, demanding ideas in the axiological layer as well as in this purely political or simply practical layer.

A few open questions arise in which I cannot respond to but perhaps our guests from Cuba will be able to do so. Today we have a true political support for democratic strength in Cuba which can organize a society as done in Poland even earlier by the Committee of Workers’ Protection (KOR), later by Solidarity and various structures during the period of the state of war.

Can Raul Castro, who is most likely the successor of Fidel Castro, be the Cuban Gobachev? Will he want to reform the system? Raul Castro is an evident symbol here because it undoubtedly concerns the majority of the political apparatus as well as about a young generation of the Cuban nation. Is there political support in Cuba for the reform trend? Briefly speaking, will the falling regime use the most repressed method in order to maintain itself, will it be ready to compromise knowing that it can end and will end with a change of system? And it will certainly end since as I said in the beginning, the Cuban system in the XXI century is an unchronological condition.

The following question concerns the immigrant environments - are they ready as far as to resignate from its radicalism and thinking: “Now we will be the owners of Cuba.”? If the idea of the emigrant environment in Cuba would be a more sentimental idea but rather than in perspective, then it would be a true complication for the transformation process.

There are many questions. Responding to them, we should, most of all, show solidarity in the fight for Cuban democracy and for the freedom of Cubans. We should share our experiences with certain humility since maturing to changes and democracy does not always look the same. Democracy is definitely built on universal standards of democratic procedures. But democracy should have its roots in the national legacy in tradition, in culture, in behavior, in temperament, and in language. It is impossible to only import democracy. It is impossible to use only one model of democracy. That is why it is good that today in Warsaw flows the voice of solidarity with the leading of Cuba to democracy, freedom, and voice of support for democratic environments.

I wish all of you that we could go to Cuba some day and see a free democratic country developing itself, taking advantage of the goods of nature which it possesses.

Aleksander Kwasniewski

Translated by: Dana Szypcio