Questionable Congratulations

Questionable Congratulations / Fernando Damaso
Posted on May 8, 2013

Although the United Nations stopped being a credible institution many
years ago, at times it still issues announcements which can leave us
astonished. This is what happened when a letter from the United Nations
Director General for Food and Agriculture (FAO) was published yesterday
in the state-run press. In it the Director General congratulates the
former president of Cuba and all the Cuban people for having fulfilled
the goal of reducing the number of malnourished people by half before
the year 2015.

First of all, diplomatic protocol dictates that such a letter be
addressed to the current president and not the former president — no
matter what personal sympathies this important official might like to
express — given that this is, supposedly, an official UN communiqué.
Secondly and most importantly, where is the FAO getting its figures for
such reports? Are they perhaps supplied by each government to the
representative in that particular country?

It is hard to understand how someone can responsibly claim that a
country with an inefficient agricultural sector — one incapable of
producing the most basic staples for its population, or at retail prices
affordable to most of its citizens — has reduced the number of
malnourished people by half. Does this half perhaps refer to all the
various types of civil servants and those who belong to the huge
government bureaucracy? Is it average citizens who make up the other half?

We Cubans know all too well how serious malnutrition is. We must
struggle day to day to find food; it is a juggling act just to survive.
Has the FAO's representative in Cuba ever looked into what the situation
really is? Judging by appearances, it would seem that he moves in the
highest circles of power — sometimes mistaking himself for one of its
officials — if we take into account his public statements, which often
appear in the state-run press. Perhaps they stem from absent-mindedness
on the part of the Director General, who resides in Rome.

We trust that statistics from the other participating countries have
been gathered in a more serious way and are, therefore, more reliable.
At least this would not lead to the macabre irony of telling someone who
is malnourished that this is not the case because the FAO has officially
declared it to be so. One final question: Of all the countries in the
world, is it only the sixteen mentioned in the letter (Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Chile, Cuba, Fiji, Georgia, Ghana, Guyana, Nicaragua, Peru,
Samoa, São Tomé and Príncipe, Thailand, Uruguay, Venezuela and Vietnam)
which have reduced malnutrition by half?

7 May 2013

http://translatingcuba.com/questionable-congratulations-fernando-damaso/