Hasta luego companero

It’s the end of an era on O’Conall Street. Rumours are now rife about the future of First Minister Ian Paisley and in the Caribbean Fidel is hanging up his rhetoric  and surrendering to his body.

There is an air of inevitability about the year ahead on this island. The bookies will soon be offering odds for not one but both Irish premiers falling on their swords. It is very possible Ahern and Paisley will look to retirement before the last year of the decade is upon us. Chapters are closing everywhere.

SF MLA Raymond McCartney was on the radio praising the Cuban experience this morning.  He spoke of the world class health care system and the education which this paradise island provides for its citizens. I agree, Cuba has built a great health system. When I visited the country as a tourist ten years ago it was clear that this was a place of extremes. For all the great medical care the poverty was shocking, for all the education prostitution was rife and the wholesale exploitation of young women was being allowed right under the noses of the state police in every corner of Havana.

The USA has behaved disgracefully towards Cuba of that there is little debate in Europe, but the Cuban government has failed its people miserably. It continues to encarcerate political dissidents, normal pratcice you may say in a Communist state but hardly the sign of a progressive place.

The country’s HIV sufferers can expect a lifetime in ‘protective custody’ and the intellectually disabled and mentally ill live in isolation and are deprived all but the most basic of rights.

I loved the Cuban people and fell in love with their beautiful island. They were well versed in the ways of the world and always keen to debate international politics. At the time, in the run up to the Good Friday Agreement, I was encouraged at how much they knew about our small island. The tragedy was the conversation invariably came to an abrupt end when the politics of their own country came up.

So hasta luego companero Fidel. You have done you state some service but the time is well past for change. The old man with the fundamentalist hew is a dying breed on the world stage.