WASHINGTON, January 8 (Sputnik) — US President Barack Obama will only bolster Cuba's regime by opening up free trade relations with the island nation, US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said in a statement.
"The idea that trade alone will soften the hand of a tyrant has not worked. In the end, the ruling clique [in Cuba] manipulates such trade so that their grip on power is strengthened," Rohrabacher said Wednesday. "I am a long-standing champion of the principles of free trade, but it must be free trade between free people."
"The president's covert manoeuvring to open relations with Cuba's Communist dictatorship was wrong and so was the way he did it," the congressman said. "There seems to be a pattern in the president's bypassing our democratic process to achieve his goals. Maybe that is what endears him to the Castro brothers."
In addition, the congressman indicated that the decision was untimely. Obama is "coming to the rescue of the Castro dictatorship," according to Rohrabacher, given that "Venezuelan and Russian subsidies for the regime have been evaporating as the price of oil drops."
The congressman said he will support congressional efforts to block Obama's "heavy-handed and wrong-headed," scheme, which "is not good for the United States, not good for the people of Cuba, and not good for the cause of freedom."
Since 1961, the United States had an embargo in place against Cuba due to Cold War antagonism between Washington and the Communist government in Havana.
Earlier on Wednesday US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also released a statement criticizing Obama's Cuban policy change.
