Today the United Nation’s General Assembly will be voting again on an issue concerning Cuba, as it has done for almost four decades now. The subject is the continuing blockade of the small Caribbean socialist nation by its bullying neighbour, the lone superpower (some will say hyper power).

The Assembly will undoubtedly call for the end to this punitive measure on Cuba by the US, not for any act of aggression or intent to do so, but just because Cuba has dared not to organise its society along the cut-throat vulture capitalism of its neighbour. For daring to imagine different worlds, successive US governments since the early 1960s have sought both to eliminate Fidel Castro and destroy Cuba’s socialism. In an enduring victory for common peoples across the world, the big guys have never won in this case!

Before the revolution of 1959 Cuba was a playground to the US. A combination of ideologically driven obsession with regime change in Cuba and nostalgia for US hegemony in the country fuelled by the powerful Cuban-American interests in the state of Florida in particular and across the US has meant that a rational debate on what threat, if any, this small island posed to the US has been almost impossible.

One does not expect that in an election year in which all opinion polls and forecasts predict a very close run between the incumbent hawkish Republican Bushman and his patrician democrat rival, reason can prevail on America’s negative policies against Cuba.

The rest of the world has no vote in the US elections even though its outcome has grave implications for all of us. However, all of us do have a voice in the United Nations even if the UN is a pejorative nomenclature inside the US. That voice should be used to restate again to the US that it cannot claim global leadership and at the same time defy global consensus and civilised standards. It cannot give itself the role of global Sheriff and act like a rogue.

Bush may have cowed many countries and peoples into quiet acquiescence in his irresponsible behaviour internationally but there is a growing concern at its exercise of power without responsibility both within America itself and internationally. The vast majority of the peoples of the world must use today’s vote on the illegal blockade on Cuba to yet again demonstrate to the US that the rest of us will have our say and exercise our right not to be colluders in US brigandage.

The usual suspect client states of the US, most notably Israel, will vote against the censure resolution while most countries of the world will vote for it. A small number may even abstain. Some African countries (a very small minority I am happy to say) in recent years have chosen, out of fear or misplaced loyalties or even diplomatic incompetence by officials, to abstain. Abstinence on such an issue is voting along with US bullying of Cuba.

Unfortunately, Uganda was one of those few African countries that abstained in last year’s vote despite assurances from the highest level to the contrary. Not long ago President Museveni bravely admitted in public that he was hoodwinked by Bush on Iraq and regretted the mistake in supporting the illegal occupation of the country. He needs to correct another US related diplomatic mistake by causing Uganda’s ambassador to the UN to vote in support of the UN resolution calling for an end to the blockade against Cuba.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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