ENHANCING CUBA – MALAYSIAN RELATIONS
“Having witnessed the 65th Merdeka celebration recently, it is a testament of how far Malaysia has come since colonial rule. There is a lot that Cuba can learn from Malaysia and I’m confident that we can go further together.”
Oftentimes, the mainstream media paints a story about a country that might not capture the full picture. International Business Review goes above and beyond to present you with a new perspective to the politics, the business, the people, the culture and the very essence of a country through the eyes of its diplomats, in The Diplomat.
In this issue, we bring you excerpts from an interview with the Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba in Malaysia – H.E. Florentino Batista González. Read on to find out more about the Ambassador’s efforts to strengthen Cuba’s bilateral relationship with Malaysia. H.E. Florentino Batista González, Read on to find out more about the Ambassador’s efforts to strengthen Cuba’s bilateral relationship with Malaysia.
“As the name implies, being an Ambassador is all about representing your country, in my case, Cuba, in another nation. There are two sides to this job. One is to be a facilitator which I fairly see myself as. I try to identify the commonalities and interests that can benefit both Malaysia and Cuba. Similarities such as both countries were under colonial rule, being surrounded by important trade routes and large neighbouring economies. The second part is to be a promoter of Cuba to Malaysia by way of cultural exchange. There is much we can learn from each other as a society. Learning about the local culture is paramount to this job. If you do not understand the country’s culture, it would quite difficult to not only establish relations but also to build upon them. When I say culture, it goes beyond what you’d normally associate with the term such as dance and art. It’s more holistic than that. Food is one such example as makan is very much ingrained in Malaysian culture. I’ve even started calling a Cuban dish, Cuban Rendang as it’s quite similar the local rendang dish! To put it simply, economic relations change all the time but long-lasting relations between countries? Culture has always been at the base of it.
Developing Together
Cuba opened its embassy in Malaysia in 1997, even though diplomatic relations were first established in 1975. Since then, there had been a number of attempts to develop bilateral relations between our two countries, from investment delegations to business delegations from all sort of sectors. One sector that Cuba definitely had some impact on,albeit limited, is in the biotechnology and health sector.
Over a decade ago, Cuba and Malaysia, through the Finlay Institute of Cuba and University Sains Malaysia (USM) collaborated towards producing a halal meningitis vaccine. At the time, all of the available vaccines were non-halal and it was especially important to the Muslim population that we produce halal vaccines as the Saudi Government requires all Hajj and Umrah pilgrims to be vaccinated against the disease.
Wealth of Potential
We are open to and interested in high technology and Malaysia is well advanced in this area. I see that Malaysia could be a great potential source of high technology for us. Not in the sense of simply acquiring them, but also to learn and perhaps even work together to develop and produce high technology. For example, Cuba has Latin America on its western hemisphere, a Spanish speaking hemisphere. Cuba’s software sector is probably the largest in this region. And we could help software companies that are looking to venture into Latin America to bridge that language barrier gap. As such, it could open an entirely huge market for Malaysia to access. That is what we can work together towards.
Coming back to biotechnology, it is still an area with the most potential to develop. One important factor is that we have quite a good number of projects. Currently, we are looking for partners to jointly develop the last stages of research, such as clinical trials. There are some pharmaceutical studies that we cannot go through with the final stages in Cuba, simply because we lack the patients to do clinical trials with. Bizarre I know, but sometimes Cuba just does not have that particular disease. As such, we believe Malaysia can be that partner because of the size of population, similar health issues and because of the vast investments Malaysia has committing itself to in this area for the last
20 years. Speaking of which, many of our friends in this area were surprised when Cuba opted to not use the available COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic. We opted to develop and produce our own vaccines, five of them in fact. Pair that with our own health protocols and today we barely have any active cases on the island. In things like that you realise we can have a major collaboration with tangible, positive results in the short term.
Roadblocks
We have major challenges as to trade between Cuba-Malaysia. First is the great distance between our two countries. This leads to the second challenge, the fact that there are no trade routes that goes directly to Latin America from Malaysia and vice versa. The only options available to both of our nations is to go through the Pacific coast of the US, Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean. This results in liners being expensive and presents a major hurdle when you’re trying to make concrete advances on bilateral trade and economic relations. Sometimes we’d find companies that produce products that we would love to have in Cuba but for the reasons above, when you total the costs, customs and such it makes little sense to purchase them from Malaysia. It is simply not feasible. This is admittedly, a challenge that is beyond both of our nations’ control, no matter how much good will there is between our nations.
Moving Forward
Both countries have big challenges ahead. For us, one is food security. Cuba is heavily reliant on food imports. Cuba could learn from Malaysia and take an intensive approach if we are somehow to solve the food security issue or at the very least, mitigate it. The current model is simply not sustainable. I had the pleasure to visit the Malaysia Agriculture, Horticulture and
Agro-tourism (MAHA) Expo earlier this year and I was quite impressed with the level of technology Malaysia has invested into agriculture, from drones to software applications.
For Malaysia, perhaps more in the sense of gaining more independence from the pharmaceutical giants. Not completely away of course, but to have the capacity to develop your own solutions. I believe Malaysia has already started on that with its own major initiative for future vaccines. The next pandemic could be right around the corner and if we have not learnt our lesson, thousands could lose their lives. Those challenges are pervasive in today’s geopolitics.
Finally, climate change. I believe every country is a net contributor. If everyone does not play a role in reducing carbon emissions, pretty soon we’d be facing more floods as the sea level rises. Especially for Cuba as we are an island. We face a reality that in 50 years there could be entire areas that could be under the sea. It is not a problem one can tackle independently. Some say we’re too late but I’m more positive than that. Cuba is now open to foreign investment to work on big green projects like solar power production. We do not have the capacity to produce solar panels, but countries like Malaysia do. So why not we work together? At the end of the day it benefits both countries. Work together and make an impact.”
“These challenges become a disincentive for a relationship. BUT we can find ways to get around it. I am confident that if we work together, there are still many things that we can do and achieve. That’s my most important objective in Malaysia. To find ways to identify the parties, ways and interests that can actually benefit our two countries.”
