Marta Elena Feitó resigned on Tuesday in her charge as Minister of Labor in Cuba one day after declare before the Parliament that in the country there are no beggars but “disguised” people, which caused the president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, to reprob it in public.
In an official note read in the state news of state television, the Cuban government reported that Feited resigned after recognizing “errors” in its recent intervention in a commission of the National Assembly of Popular Power (Unicameral Parliament).
In addition, he pointed out that the resignation was accepted by the political bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC, the only legal) and the State Council due to its “lack of objectivity and sensitivity” when addressing key issues for Cuban society.
According to the note, the resignation was accepted “from the lack of objectivity and sensitivity with which it addressed issues that focus today political and government management, focused on addressing real phenomena and never desired by our society.”
Feitó was in charge of the work portfolio since 2019, at the beginning of Díaz-Canel’s first mandate, and is also a member of the Central Committee of the PCC.
The words of the now former minister outraged both the dissent and circles of the ruling party. “When you look at your hands, look at the clothes that these people carry, they are disguised as beggars, they are not beggars. In Cuba there are no beggars,” said Feitó.
In addition, he pointed out that people in vulnerability “found an easy way of life to earn money and not work with the corresponding formalities.” “No, that is not a wandering, that is a person who has sought an easy way of life in a traffic light, cleaning the windshield, and possibly later, with that money, what is going to drink alcoholic beverages in the corner,” he added. He invited people to “not lower the window” of their cars to give them money, even.
He also said that there are no people looking for food in the garbage dumps: “Those people are recovering raw material and what they are, are illegal of self -employment (self -employed) who are violating the treasury,” he tried to argue.
The intervention was not questioned by the deputies, all PCC militants or members of organizations related to the training or the Executive.
Díaz-Canel reprimand
The discomfort in networks-the controversy was not covered in the official Cuban press-reached such an extent that, a day later, Díaz-Canel himself expressed his “disagreement” in another parliamentary commission, although without mentioning the name of Feitó.
The Cuban president said: “I do not share some criteria issued in the commission on this subject (…) It is counterproductive to issue judgments like those (…) do not defend the revolution when we hide the problem we have.”
Díaz-Canel had already referred to the controversy hours before on social networks, although in ambiguous terms and without referring to the minister.
But the noon tone – state television broadcast its speech in full during the afternoon news – went to more.
“From the party and from the government we work to address all the problems (…) We are public servants, deputies that represent the people, and we cannot act with pride or arrogance, disconnected from the realities we live,” he censored.
