WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Cuba’s leadership is incapable of resolving the country’s deepening power crisis, calling for major political change following a nationwide blackout. “Cuba has an economy that doesn’t work, and a political and governmental system that can’t fix it, so they have to change dramatically,” Rubio told reporters at the White House. He added that the current system had long depended on external subsidies, first from the Soviet Union and later Venezuela, warning that without such support, the country now faces severe difficulties. Rubio said the leaders in charge “don’t know how to fix it” and argued that “they have to get new people in charge.” The remarks came after Cuba’s Electric Union reported a total collapse of the national power system on Monday, leaving millions without electricity as demand far exceeded available generation capacity. Authorities said the grid had already been under strain due to a generation deficit before the outage, as power supply failed to meet rising demand across the island. The blackout is the latest in a series of outages highlighting Cuba’s ongoing energy and economic crisis, which has intensified in recent months.WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Cuba’s leadership is incapable of resolving the country’s deepening power crisis, calling for major political change following a nationwide blackout. “Cuba has an economy that doesn’t work, and a political and governmental system that can’t fix it, so they have to change dramatically,” Rubio told reporters at the White House. He added that the current system had long depended on external subsidies, first from the Soviet Union and later Venezuela, warning that without such support, the country now faces severe difficulties. Rubio said the leaders in charge “don’t know how to fix it” and argued that “they have to get new people in charge.” The remarks came after Cuba’s Electric Union reported a total collapse of the national power system on Monday, leaving millions without electricity as demand far exceeded available generation capacity. Authorities said the grid had already been under strain due to a generation deficit before the outage, as power supply failed to meet rising demand across the island. The blackout is the latest in a series of outages highlighting Cuba’s ongoing energy and economic crisis, which has intensified in recent months.
