Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel warned Sunday that his government would not tolerate public disturbances during the nationwide power outage which the authorities are struggling to resolve. The island's 10 million people were spending their third night in the dark after the collapse on Friday of Cuba's largest power plant crippled the whole national grid. The government said power is expected to be restored to most of the country by Monday evening.
But the president issued a warning there would no room for unrest in a country already battling sky-high inflation and shortages of food, medicine, fuel and water. Dressed in a military uniform, Diaz-Canel said during a news conference that some Cubans had taken to the streets on Saturday evening in an attempt to "disturb public order." Perpetrators will be prosecuted "with the severity that revolutionary laws provide," he said, adding that the protesters were acting "under the direction of the foreign operators of the Cuban counter-revolution.
" Witnesses had reported that residents in several neighborhoods of Havana had taken to the streets on Sunday night to express their discontent. There are people "making noise with pots and pans, shouting 'Let us have the power back on,'" a resident of the Santo Suarez neighborhood told AFP. In July 2021, blackouts sparked an unprecedented outpouring of public anger.
Thousands of Cubans took to the streets shouting, "We are hungry" and "Freedom!" in a rare challenge to the government. One pe.
