The first meeting of a roundtable which is to share experiences of political transformation in order to promote democratic change in Cuba will start on Thursday, said the spokesman of Hungary’s main opposition party Fidesz.
The initiative to set up the “Advisors on Cuban Transition” belongs to Viktor Orban, Hungary’s former prime minister (1998-2002) who now leads the main opposition.
The advisors on the roundtable will embrace leaders from the central and eastern European region as well as the Baltics, Peter Szijjarto told MTI on Wednesday.
Former Romanian leader Emil Constantinescu, and former prime ministers of Estonia and Poland, Mart Laar and Jerzy Buzek will be among personalities advising Cuban opposition figures and representatives of Cuban emigrants on how to prepare for political, constitutional, social and economic transformation with the aim of promoting democracy.
You can imagine it can’t you !
First–sell off all Gov.assets,dead cheap
Second–make sure you and your cronies are in a position to buy/steal them
Third–cash in quick and make a killing
Asset stripping–ex-commie quick guide to get rich quick at the expense of your people and country.
And final lesson,just LIE,LIE and LIE more (But make sure nobody as a tape recorder when you brag about your lying !!)
Laughable if it was not so disgusting.
Ricsi has summed it up well. State ownership of everything causes big headaches and practical problems when a society wants to move on to private ownership. No real legal or political checks and balances existed for de-communizing countries- or at least not sufficiently to keep a new oligarchy from emerging. Either follow the Chinese example, which combines both systems, or let things go into free-fall. Sad.
Cuba’s future after communism will also be very affected by the US. I predict the island will come under the US economic sphere, as there will be too many incentives for American developers and businesses to go there.
There is no independence for nations like this.
Well, the key problem is that if unless you just kill or enslave all the former commies bigs, they will surrender power only if they are allowed to become “biznessmen.” Then inevitably, they get back into political power *and* have all the money, too.
I think about this a lot, because I played a (very very very very) small role in the early move by these MSZMP fucks into the business realm in the eary-90s.
Really, the best solution is probably to just say that anyone who was a mid- to senior official in a left dictatorship has to spend the first 10 years after the system change working ONLY as an employee – even a proper proletarian! – without the ability to own any significant assets. The liberals would scream bloody murder, and would have a point (this would be akin to commie-style slavery) though I can’t think of another way to make the transition without the reds winning yet again.
Cuba of course is a very special case. But just imagine how much more hygenic this country would be today if cretins like Medgyessy had spent 1990-2000 sweeping streets rather than working as high-paid “consultants” and bank presidents while waiting to get back into office. Ick.
I remember a conversation I had with Barbara Bush, back when we were still on speaking terms (before the Silver Fox stole my mother’s plum gin recipe and forced me into hiding for 10 years on pain of death by water-boarding). I recall that she insisted that “her and her oil-money friends in the CIA” were going to “tear Cuba a new asshole” so that they could get back to “plundering their sugar, cigars and rum” once “those hippy-bearded Wop John Lennon wannabes” (Castro and Guevara) were “sleeping wit’ da fishes”, ie deceased. (Barbara did have a habit of showing her Lower East Side roots back in those days, poor dear). Now all these years later it finally seems to be ready to begin. And who’s the Chief Salesman of the New Order? CEE’s current No1 Bushite, Big Vik!!! Hurray, he’ll give those Cuban civil servants and politicos good advice on how to sell off everything and pocket the money. I feel much better now for knowing he’s holding Cuba’s hand.
I agree with all previous posters. The wholesale rape and pillage of state assets for personal gain in former Communist countries has been one of the most saddening aspects of the region’s recent history. I liked the idea of lowly entry level job reallocation for state officials, a very entertaining and hopefully educating (for all of us I think) proposition. Either that or they should have been made to wear clown costumes in public for three years. That would have hopefully deflated any big ideas of shitting on their fellow humans.
Ovictor could not convince me the sky is blue, but that is not the real issue!
He is a qualified candidate for the session!!! Hehehehe … he wanna unload his stashed pesos with cuban opposition figures. Kinda joint venture??
Well I guess Orbán is better than Gyurcsány,though not by much !
God help Cuba
What about Orban and his buddies getting round the table and organizing Hungary’s transition from communism. Been twenty years now people and still we have our balls in the vice courtesy of MSZP corrupt communist practices and a bureaucracy and administration that belong to the dark ages.
Cigar anyone?
A Call to the People of the World to Support Iceland
Against the Financial Blackmail of the British and
Dutch Governments and the IMF
http://tarpley.net/
Why should the British and Dutch tax payers pay for bad loans given by an Icelandic bank in the UK and Holland?
Relative to the size of its economy, Iceland’s banking collapse is the largest suffered by any country in economic history, so it is not cat-shit we are speaking about.
All 3 Icelandic banks we speak about have been taken over by the Icelandic Financial Supervisory Authority, so it is therefore a problem for the Icelandic State.
Now the Icelandic State is trying not to honour the responsibilities the banks they have taken over, that is the simple fact.
Law, as usual doing the protest-thing, misses the obvious parallel:
* In Eastern Europe all international, most west-European, banks have taken their responsibilities on the losses the have had here.
What would Law and his Jobbik-kind have said if the foreign owners of Hungarian banks would not have covered the losses, but had let that be up to the Hungarian State and the Hungarian Bank Customers?
We would have heard another logic, not that logic and consequences ever was important for populists, just shouting what can give sympathy for the day, without thinking about what actually happened yesterday and what can happen tomorrow.
Viking the Israel Agent is still here, piss off!!
Hungary’s national debt is underwritten by the IMF/EU World bank etc.
If financial support was to be withdrawn by these organizations, Hungary would be sunk in the same fishing boat as the Icelanders.
My advice: pay up Ice people because you want EU membership and that is the only route by which you can achieve solvency again.
Dutchman and Anglo put the boot in otherwise. Sorry- facts of life I’m afraid!
Viking,
“Now the Icelandic State is trying not to honour the responsibilities the banks they have taken over, that is the simple fact”
Isn’t it the Icelandic ‘people’ who don’t want to pay? This came about through a referendum, the Icelandic government wants to pay. Maybe they should have a “before and after” lesson, like the Irish people went through ratifying the Lisbon treaty.
Yes, you are right.
It actually went through the Parliament and then the President refused to sign it claiming public outcry.
If I was living on Iceland I would not be so happy to pay the British, especially after all the Fishing Wars and everything, but as ICESAVE pointed out, if they want to join the EU, they better fix this first, in some way.
Iceland lived high on the bubble, I remember seeing the Icelandic Bank’s ads in the UK a few years ago, so they felt ‘non-beatable’.
Of course it is an outrage that *any* tax-payer need to clean up after private investors failures to run proper businesses, but that is life.
One can just hope that those private investors lost everything, as they should for running a too risky business.
At least the Icelandic people can see, in difference from the Irish, that it is not all roses to join the EU. It actually carries some responsibilities.
Iceland, thrown out in the middle of nowhere, will hardly be an asset and big contributor to the EU, but they are Vikings, so it is OK…
Something like 12 thousand pounds per head it will cost Icelanders to repay the debt.
The president suggests a referendum as to whether the people want to pay, or not. Joke time???
There are a lot of assets – bricks and mortar etc tied in with all this that the Ice folk should ask questions about and do some investigating too.
Balance sheets, spread sheets, ledgers, receipts etc
and a good and honest accountancy firm to establish
just what happened to all the money before the collapse- that’s what they need.
Wait a moment..I think we also need these things in Hungary as well – never did find out where all the EU/IMF loan money went,. Did we?
Icesave,
“never did find out where all the EU/IMF loan money went,. Did we?”
Presumably, most of it went to Hungary’s previous creditors. When a country borrows money, it borrows for a fixed term. When that term is up, it has to pay the money back, otherwise the country defaults. Hungary went to the EU/IMF because it couldn’t find any other sources of funds to repay its debts, or fund the new deficit.