The former Cuban political prisoner Armando Valladares categorically rejected the idea that "any communist" could participate in the transition of the island, clarifying that the "technocrats" mentioned by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the House of Representatives are the Cubans in exile, not officials of the Havana government.
The statements come a day after Rubio stated before the Foreign Relations Committee that Cuba has "technocrats" ready to negotiate a change of government, citing Poland and the Czech Republic as models for transition, remarks that sparked controversy in the exile community.
«The technocrats are those of us on this side», Valladares stated in an interview with Tania Cost, dismissing the idea that this label could apply to anyone within the regime's apparatus.
The former prisoner, who spent 22 years in Cuban jails, was emphatic: "There is no way that those who have upheld and maintained injustice will now guarantee justice."
Valladares argued that this is a fundamental issue: no one who has been part of the government, directly or indirectly, should have a place in the transition. “How can we allow those who destroyed the country to now participate in its construction?” he asked.
The former political prisoner clearly distinguished between the regime and the people: "There are thousands and thousands of Cubans in Cuba who were not in the government and did not participate in any of those events," he emphasized, underlining that the rejection is aimed solely at those who have upheld the dictatorship for almost seven decades.
In the same vein, Valladares described the Cuban constitutions of 1976 and 1999 as completely invalid. "That was never proposed, there was no constituent assembly, the people did not vote freely because they were under a dictatorship. That holds no validity, absolutely none," he stated.
Instead, he defended the Constitution of 1940 as a legitimate framework for transition, arguing that it was never formally repealed and meets all the requirements to be applied immediately.
Valladares also expressed his rejection of the participation of observers from the United Nations in any transition process. "We will not accept, and this is emphatically so, inviting UN observers," he declared.
His argument was moral and historical. "The United Nations has always supported Fidel Castro's dictatorship. They have never asked him about freedoms, political prisoners, or the structures."
Y añadió: «Esa gente moralmente no tienen principio, no tienen absolutamente nada que hacer, porque cuando pudieron hacerlo no lo hicieron».
The former political prisoner also highlighted the role of the Cuban businessman Héctor Lanz, who successfully gathered for the first time all the major exile organizations around the 1940 Constitution without a single disagreement.
"It's the first time I've been at a conference where the most important presentations from the exile community were made, and where there wasn't a single disagreement," Valladares stated.
According to the ex-prisoner, the first thing to be declared in the transition is that the Communist Party will be deemed illegal due to the crimes committed during decades of dictatorship.
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