February 19th, 2008
Analysis: What’s next for Cuba?
By Richard Lapper
Published in the Financial Times
February 19, 2008
The only real surprise about Fidel Castro’s decision to step down formally from his position as Cuban president was its timing.
The announcement, carried in the columns of the Tuesday morning edition of Granma, the Communist party’s daily newspaper, came five days ahead of the opening session of the national assembly, a legislative body whose members elect the president and other top members of the government and which had been expected to make significant changes.
Mr Castro, who is now 81, has been head of the Cuban government and ruling party ever since his guerrilla army marched into Havana 49 years ago, ousting the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
But since undergoing stomach surgery in the summer of 2006 he has handed over most government responsibilities to his brother Raúl, a fellow communist party leader five years his junior.
As the elder Mr Castro recovers his strength from a series of operations, he has slowly re-entered the political mainstream, writing highly opinionated newspaper columns and meeting government leaders such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Mr Castro even contested and won a seat in the 614-seat national assembly last month, a position that would allow him to be re-elected again to the top executive position. However, it has become steadily clear in recent weeks that he is too weak to resume his top jobs.
At no point has the revolutionary leader appeared in public. Although the nature of his medical condition is surrounded in secrecy, there is anecdotal evidence that he is unable to concentrate for extended periods and has even occasionally lost consciousness during private meetings. Indeed, in December Mr Castro announced that he did not intend to cling to any position - ”even less to obstruct the rise of younger persons”.
In Tuesday’s letter to Granma, Mr Castro continued in the same vein. He announced that his first duty was to prepare Cubans for his eventual departure, although he also indicated that he would continue to read and write about political developments.
The crucial question now is who the assembly will nominate to take over from Mr Castro at its meeting on Sunday and how important Mr Castro’s written opinions – entitled Reflections from Comrade Fidel – will be, as the new leadership faces up to a number of serious economic and political challenges.
As David Jessop, executive director of the London-based Caribbean Council, puts it: ”Fidel could play the role of ideological guru.”
Cuba’s economic fortunes have improved in recent years, as a result of rises in commodity prices and the extensive support received from Mr Chávez’s Venezuela.
Nevertheless, consumer goods and some basic services are either scarce or of poor quality.
Raúl Castro, the acting president and the man most widely tipped to become Fidel Castro’s permanent replacement, has led what has, by Cuban standards, been a far-reaching debate about the causes of these micro-economic difficulties.
In this context, there has been some tentative discussion about reintroducing more open agricultural markets, and giving greater freedoms for farmers has been a particularly important theme.
None of this has been particularly surprising since, as head of the armed forces – widely seen as the most effective and popular of Cuban institutions – Raúl Castro is seen as a more pragmatic and less ideological figure than his older brother. Indeed, the armed forces have played an important role in Cuban business development in recent years, with army-controlled enterprises playing a crucial role in the important tourism sector, for example.
It is unclear to what extent Fidel Castro would want to or be able to oppose even these limited changes.
The older Mr Castro allowed some market reform to take place when the collapse of the Soviet Union triggered a sharp economic decline and threatened the revolution’s survival.
But he was always suspicious of the individualism associated with business-friendly reforms, believing them to be ultimately incompatible with the country’s socialist principles. He has been prominent in moves to halt the reforms – the last serious changes (of the banking sector) took place in 1997 – and in some cases reverse them.
As Marifeli Pérez-Stable, a Cuban American sociologist at Florida International University, put it in a recent book*: ”The comandante… has wielded an impregnable veto over the economic transformations… he has not only obstructed further economic reforms, but has also shifted to high intensity mobilisational politics.”
*Looking Forward: Comparative Perspectives on Cuba’s Transition (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007)