Responses to crime must be strong, Cuban president asserts

The first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and president of the country, Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, described as an event of great importance the National Exercise of Prevention and Confrontation to crime, corruption, illegalities and social indisciplines, which began on Monday, taking as a starting point a meeting held at the headquarters of the Central Committee and in which authorities from all the territories of the country participated via videoconference.

The exercise -explained the Head of State-, gives continuity to the one developed in December last year and it ratifies all the effort, the commitment to continue advancing in the direct fight against social indiscipline, illegalities and crime, as well as the organization of relations between the state and non-state sectors, he said.

In the particular case of crimes, it meant the appearance of acts of violence, aggressiveness and economic damage, which must be confronted with total severity.

Even though prior to these days, preparation activities associated with the actions to be implemented were carried out in each province, the President insisted that the exercise implies a daily analysis of everything that is being done, and therefore there will be new elements that will arise and require preparation to face them.

He also emphasized the need to make exemplary judgments, fundamentally of facts related to crimes that have occurred in institutions; theft of electric cables in irrigation machines; stoning of stores and buses, as well as cases of corruption. The answers, he emphasized, have to be strong.

According to the explanation offered by Julio Cesar Garcia Rodriguez, head of the Office of Attention to the Young Communist League, Mass Organizations, State Bodies and Legal Sector of the Central Committee of the Party, the main objective of the exercise, which will last until March 29, is to "increase the actions of the State bodies, the Government, the Ministry of the Interior, the political, social and mass organizations, popular control and communications in the prevention and confrontation of these harmful phenomena that affect security and internal order".

The fulfillment of this objective and other specific ones also defined, is closely related to the guidelines 209 and 210 of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution, as well as the objective 8 of the Government Program to correct distortions and boost the economy.

Garcia Rodriguez detailed that, for the organization and preparation of the process, indications were issued to the organs, institutions and structures of political leadership, among which he highlighted the adjustment made in each territory to the plan of actions, taking into account their own characteristics, the behavior of these phenomena and the places of greater incidence and complexity.

As main actions to be developed in all territories, he commented on the conclusion of the verification process developed by the Party on the contractual relations of state economic actors with non-state management forms; the implementation of actions to prevent and combat drugs; the intensification of the work of the inspection bodies to combat abusive and speculative prices, and the implementation of inspections of the urban network and the investment process, especially in photovoltaic solar parks.

At the meeting were also present the Secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Roberto Morales Ojeda, and Brigadier General and Secretary of the Council of Ministers, Jose Amado Ricardo Guerra, both members of the Political Bureau, as well as cadres of the State bodies and mass organizations, representatives of institutions of the Ministry of the Interior and agencies of the Central State Administration.