These meetings are part of the activities that precede the First Ordinary Session of the 8th Legislature, scheduled for Saturday, July 6, at Havana’s Conference Center.

Six of these groups of parliamentarians will meet at the Conference Center, and the other at the “Victoria de Giron” Institute of Basic and Preclinical Sciences, stated Granma newspaper.

The results of the latest internal audit performed by the General Comptroller of the Republic will be taken into consideration in all committees. They will be jointly introduced by this body and will incorporate information from the Directorate of the National Assembly.

They will also discuss the organization of their work, from the priorities to be developed and approved for the second semester.

In particular, the Commissions on Constitutional and Legal Affairs and Service Sector will decide whether or not to approve a Draft Bill for Maritime Navigation.

The Commission on Economic Affairs will decide on the 2012 Budget Liquidation report, to be presented by the Ministry of Finance and Prices.

As the Council of Ministers announced June 28, the reports on the fulfillment of the Economic Plan and the implementation of the budget at the end of the first semester of the year were approved for debate in the Assembly.

The People’s Power National Assembly for this Legislature was created on February 24, and is comprised of 612 members, representing 168 municipalities, elected by the direct and secret vote cast by more than 7.8 million citizens.

In the Havana Convention Center, usual venue of Parliament, those elected in the elections of February 3 presented the certificates accrediting them as members and signed their oaths, with an attendance of 98.37 percent.

With the oath, read by the youngest Deputy, Lisette Conde, they pledged loyalty to their homeland, to respect and uphold the law, to be a servant of the people and the community and fulfill the obligations to the post.

For her part, Head of the National Electoral Commission, Alina Balseiro, detailed the composition of the Assembly, which was renewed by 67 percent and the average age of its members is 48.

She also noted that 48.86 percent of deputies are women, 37.09 percent are black and 82.68 are university graduates.

According to Balseiro, the Parliament is composed by representatives of different sectors of society, including workers, farmers, teachers, doctors, scientists, writers, artists, religious leaders, students, political leaders, businessmen, athletes and members of the armed institutions. Cuban Parliament members do not receive any remuneration for exercising this responsibility, since this function is not professionalized but run simultaneously with other occupations.

In this regard, he declared that the study of more profound policies and the drafting of adequate legal norms to advance in the updating of

the economy, mark the work of the Commission for the Application of the Guidelines approved by the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party.

According to Murillo, who heads that Commission, the updating process is in advanced stage of outlining the concept of a Cuban economic model with a long-term projection. Among the macroeconomic policies, Murillo pointed they include the introduction of wholesale and retail prices, the monetary and exchange unification, a complex problem of the domestic market.

As for the Tax Law already approved and whose application will start on January 1st, 2013, he considered the legislation adjusted to modifications of the updating process and highlighted it was approved with the regulatory system to be a

pplied.

Regarding to the creation of non-agricultural cooperatives, he pointed out that decrees allowing for the introduction of the planned 230 entities in an experiment that will monitor their performance.

Murillo also referred to the strengthening of state enterprises, based on an experiment to be carried out in 2013 to increase the autonomy of those firms and their faculties to handle their own financial and economic management.

These modifications target the increase of profits in order to raise workers´ incomes as well as facilitate the creation of a wholesale market.

According to the presentation, the Enterprise Group of the Sugar Industry and the Group of Biotechnological and Pharmaceutical Enterprises are some of the companies included in the experiment.

Another issue approached by the Vicepresident refers to the concession of credits, which increased to 85 thousand loans for a total of 596 million pesos, most of which for housing construction.

Also, Murillo referred to the advances achieved in renting office and store spaces to non-state workers, as well as the study being carried out about the new forms of self-employment which will define the reach of each activity.

On December 20 I was invited to attend the regular meeting of the Education, Culture, Science and Technology Commission of the National Assembly of the People’s Power, held at the International Conference Center, where Heriberto Feraudy, who chairs the José Antonio Aponte Commission against Racial Discrimination of the Union of Cuban Artists and Writers (UNEAC) talked about the race problem in Cuba. It was the excellent presentation of a summary of previous discussions about this issue.

I asked from the floor from the section assigned to guests and took the opportunity to introduce myself as Director of the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) and member of the Aponte Commission, and gave them my opinion about how we have approached and worked on this topic. As with any other form of discrimination, racism has a socioeconomic origin found in the relations of domination imposed by the power groups in class societies.

Whoever suffers from racial problems also suffers from other forms of discrimination based on their sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, economic status, location, religion, ethnic extraction, language and many other excuses to blow up any individual or collective feature out of all proportion with a view to its use as a tool of domination.

My views sparked off an in-depth discussion among the legislators who made up this Commission. The most interesting thing about the debate was that it took the cross-sectional relationship among multiple forms of discrimination as the starting point for analysis, to which end plenty of eloquent examples were mentioned about Cuba’s present situation. Miguel Barnet, Abel Prieto, Ricardo Alarcón and Zuleica Romay made enlightening interventions in the same spirit.

I quoted Fernando Martínez Heredia, who says that socialism is a process of cultural transformation, which practice has proved to be true after 53 years of Revolution. If we don’t design permanent educational and communication strategies –as CENESEX has done in the last few years in the field of sexual orientation and gender identity– our society won’t be able to implement the cultural changes it intends to do for the sake of emancipation and full justice.

There were comments about the need to establish legislation against all forms of discrimination that, I believe, must make special emphasis on the definition of their specific ways of expression. Beyond any criminal penalties, we must undertake a far-reaching work based on dialogue about and participation in this complicated effort to change our way of thinking.