Cuba’s President Raúl Castro confirmed on 24 February that he would only remain in power for five more years, stepping aside in February 2018. If he is true to his word, then the Castro dynasty will have held sway for 59 years in Cuba. Castro said his decision was consistent with the commitment by the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) in a party conference in January 2012 to introduce two-term limits for elected officials. By 2018, if not before, he will also have reached his biological limit, being nearly 87. During the next five years he will endeavour to entrench a Chinese-style economic opening while preserving the closed political system of a one-party state.
Castro said he would amend the constitution to provide not just a limit of 10 years on public office but also a maximum age for its holders. He said this marked “a defining step in the configuration of the future direction of the country, by means of a gradual and ordered transfer of the principal posts (of government) to the new generations”. After being ‘elected’ to the top job, he said this would be his last term, irrespective of when the constitution is “perfected”.
Castro said it was essential “to act in advance to ensure sufficient cadres are trained to take the top positions in the future…so that the replacement of leaders becomes a natural and systematic process”. He did not explain why it was appropriate to restrict future leaders of Cuba to two terms but it had not been in the country’s interests in the past to allow youth to come through to replenish the Revolution. Rather than an attempt to exert control over the Revolution from beyond the grave, however, the reform, Castro argued, would ensure “the preservation of the nation’s continuity and stability without any interruptions”, possibly an acknowledgement of the huge uncertainty in Venezuela surrounding the political future of President Hugo Chávez (see below).
Castro sought to make the case that present leaders of the Revolution had provided the altruistic model for inter-generational transfer of power. He claimed that the decision by José Ramόn Machado Ventura to offer up his post as first vice-president of the council of state “in the interest of promoting the new generation” constituted “a sign of his genuine revolutionary fibre, with no room for vanity or personal interest, still less clinging onto any post. This is the essence of the founding generation of this Revolution. This is how Fidel acted five years ago, setting the supreme example. This we trust is how the new generations will also be.” Machado Ventura’s ‘selfless’ impulse was taken at the age of 82; Fidel’s shining example for the younger generation came after 49 years at the helm - when he was too ill to remain in power.
Machado Ventura was replaced by Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, 52, as the new first vice-president of the council of state and council of ministers, making him, nominally, the second most powerful figure in government. “Díaz-Canel is not an upstart or improvised: his working trajectory stretches back almost 30 years,” Castro explained. Born in the central province of Villa Clara, Díaz-Canel graduated in electronic engineering and became a professor at the provincial Universidad Central. He was elected to the PCC central committee in 1991 and after a decade as the head of the provincial committee in Villa Clara he became the youngest member ever of the politburo in 2003. He then served as first secretary of the PCC in the eastern province of Holguín until 2009 when he became higher education minister, a position he held for three years before picking up one of the five vice-presidencies of the council of ministers.
The promotion of Díaz-Canel at the expense of a member of the gerontocracy was a small gesture to the younger generation, although whether he is really being groomed as a successor or is just an efficient apparatchik (in the mould of Chávez’s vice-presidents, such as Elías Jaua) remains to be seen. The Revolution has a track record of consuming its own children. Men who in their day were tipped to be potential successors, such as Felipe Pérez Roque and Carlos Lage, were cut down when perceived to be a threat. In Díaz-Canel’s favour is that he is reputed to be a good communicator and shrewd administrator, an archetypal Raulista who has served his dues and risen steadily through the ranks, rather than a charismatic ideologue like Pérez Roque and Lage, the so-called “Talibanes” suddenly parachuted to prominence by Fidel.
Deeper change
In addition to the infusion of young blood, Castro was also intent on highlighting the greater gender and racial equality on the newlook council of state. The national assembly designated 17 new members of the 31-strong entity, which represents the assembly between its two annual sessions and thus wields far more power. Of the 31, 13 are women and 12 Cubans of African descent or mestizos, Castro said, with the average age of the council now 57. There was a similar change in the composition of the new central committee of the PCC last year, with the quota of women among the 115 members rising from just 13% to 42% and the number of blacks and mestizos increasing to 31%.
The renewal of two-thirds of the national assembly also resulted in greater gender and racial equality with Esteban Lazo Hernández, 69, becoming the most senior black politician in the PCC after replacing Ricardo Alarcón, the long-serving president of the body. Lazo was elected to parliament in 1981 and in 1993 became a vice-president of the council of state, a position he has held since then, as well as a member of the politburo. Castro said he had risen “from his humble origin as a sugar cane cutter and worker in the sugar mill and rice dryer in Jovellanos (a city in the western province of Matanzas).”
The US State Department was unimpressed with the changes. “Absent the fundamental democratic reforms necessary to give people their free will and their ability to pick their own leaders, it won’t be a fundamental change for Cuba,” State Department Spokesman Patrick Ventrell said.
Chávez: uncertainty prevails
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez apparently held a five-hour meeting with senior officials on 22 February. “Does this mean the president is totally recovered? No but…(he) is governing,” Diosdado Cabello, the head of the national assembly, said. The opposition openly questioned why, if Chávez is able to exert himself for this length of time, he cannot take the short oath of office in front of supreme court (TSJ) magistrates. “It is up to the comandante, when he considers he can (do it),” Cabello said. In a piece entitled ‘Aló…¿Presidente?’, Teodoro Petkoff, the editor of the weekly Tal Cual, argued that Chávez’s invisibility cast doubt on the veracity of anything emanating from the government. He said that if Chávez were sworn in it would resolve the current constitutional anomaly, although the TSJ maintains that there is no anomaly and that the status quo conforms to the principle of “administrative continuity”.
Castro meets Medvedev
President Raúl Castro met the Russian prime minister Dimitri Medvedev on 21 February. They discussed strengthening ties in the spheres of investment, aeronautics, tourism, health, education, science and culture, signing 10 bilateral agreements. Among these was a new accord governing Cuba’s outstanding debt, amassed with the former Soviet Union, which is estimated to be between US$20bn and US$30bn. Russia currently only ranks ninth as a bilateral trading partner, with just US$224m in trade in 2011.
End of preview - This article contains approximately 1264 words.
Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article
Not a Subscriber?
Choose from one of the following options
