The Mexican entrepreneur Fredo Arias-King, president of the CASLA Institute and specialist in post-communist democratic transitions listed this Saturday, in an interview granted to CiberCuba, the three fundamental mistakes that should not be made on the Island after its liberation, based on the study of 30 countries that emerged from the Eurasian communist bloc between 1989 and 1991.
Arias-King, author of the book Transiciones La experiencia de Europa del Este and advisor to leaders of the Cuban opposition, including the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, outlined the lessons that distinguish the successes —Estonia, Czech Republic, Poland— from the failures —Russia, Nicaragua, Romania—.
The first and primary lesson is what is known in transitology as the iron law. "The more the elites of the previous regime participate in the new reality after liberation, the worse it goes for the country. And there is not a single exception," warned Arias-King.
Secondly, he mentioned leaving the space on the left vacant and not filling that gap with an anti-communist social democratic party, to prevent the regime's elite from simply changing their name and acronym; to prevent them from taking over that space and managing to infiltrate the system.
The third mistake is to avoid a presidential democracy and choose a parliamentary system instead. As he explained, in presidential democracies, only one person needs to be corrupted, who holds guaranteed power for a term of four, five, or six years. In contrast, in a parliamentary system, the prime minister is aware that their stability depends on Parliament.
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