CUBA/ARGENTINA: President Fidel Castro's leadership succession appears to have taken shape in Cuba under his brother Raul

Whether or not ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro reappears in public this week at his 80th birthday celebration, a successor government led with stealth by his brother Raul appears to be firmly in place. For four months since the Cuban leader underwent emergency surgery and turned over power temporarily, his designated heir and long-serving defense minister has run the country with few speeches and less fanfare. Ordinary Cubans have seen little of low-key Raul Castro other than fleeting glimpses of his speeding motorcade of new BMWs. Government sources say the acting president has been very active holding dozens of meetings, strengthening the ruling Communist Party and getting involved in areas of policy that were his brother's domain, such as the economy. "We have remained alone and we are here and we must know that to preserve the victorious revolution in the future, when there is this hole that nobody can fill and we will have to fill it between us all as a people," said Cuban Foreign Minister, Felipe Perez Roque. Along official lines, many in Cuba believe that Raul is firmly in charge, but he has not shown his hand yet. For others, it makes little difference whether Fidel comes back or not because the transition, or at least the succession, has begun. Shocked by video footage of a frail Fidel Castro last month, many Cubans now doubt the ageing "comandante" struck by an undisclosed illness will return to anything but a symbolic leadership role. Their hopes for economic relief in the Western Hemisphere's only Communist society are now pinned on Raul Castro, who in the past backed reforms allowing private initiative to flourish. For Ricardo Alarcon, Head of the Cuban National Assembly, the revolution will indisputably outlive Castro. "The revolution is not an invention of one person. The revolution has it roots in the history of Cuba. Who has been the protagonist? The people will change, the protagonists will change, just like they have changed over the past forty-five years," claimed Alarcon. Fidel Castro is expected to make at least a brief appearance at a military parade on Saturday marking the 50th anniversary of the day he landed in eastern Cuba to start a guerrilla movement that seized power in the 1959 revolution. Foreign analysts agree a thus-far smooth succession has begun, though they are not certain where it will take Cuba. According to University of Buenos Aires Professor Waldo Ansaldi, the fact that the silky handing over of power created no real upheaval, raises the question of how strong the regime might be. "(We have seen) none of the catastrophes that was assumed were going to happen, from uprisings to general disquiet, which would imply in some way the dismantling of the regime. That has not happened. On the contrary the regime has maintained its monolithic form and the society has supported the process of Raul Castro taking over - still temporarily - the position of the president. This is probably, without being something definitive, surely the best transition experiment for the regime without Fidel as president," explained the political scientist. Dissidents like Eloy Gutierrez Menollo believe it's utopian to think of a transition until the government of Cuba is free from Fidel and his acolytes. "If there comes a time in which a conjuncture is presented in which Fidel has to retire, who in after working for so many years he has the right to retire, and we support this unquestionable retirement. If he retired and there was nobody under the helm of Fidel, we would be able to think about initiating some change. But while there are people in the government under Fidel's helm, I do not believe that we are able to talk about any real transition," expressed Gutierrez. Both for analysts and dissidents, speculation is the only option left, considering the confidentiality with which the Cuban government is dealing with the situation. "It is difficult to define how much it is a test and how much it is a transition. There is one thing that we still do not know: whether what is occurring is irreversible or reversible, that is to say, concretely whether Fidel will continue to remove himself from exercising his power or eventually he will return. In either of both cases it is clear that this has opened a process that can define the terms of transition for a post-Fidel Cuba, in context and within a framework of continuity which continues to self-designate more by convenience than by than exactly 'the Cuban Revolution'," said professor Ansaldi. Raul Castro is widely believed to admire China's economic model of capitalist growth under continued Communist rule, but he has not given any indication that reform is on the way. His first moves have been in the opposite direction, continuing a drive against corruption that has landed managers of state companies in jail and passing measures for stricter discipline in the work place. Analysts say it is unlikely Raul Castro will introduce reforms while his brother is still alive and able to veto them, and while he feels the threat of U.S. destabilization is real. Despite his fragile health, on his last Cuban television appearance last month, Fidel Castro let on that he stills on top of things. "This is one of the phones with which people communicate with me and I make a number of calls everyday and here my friend has answered, but I am not going to say anything else," said Castro. These images of a gaunt-looking Castro are a far cry from the stocky fighter who left Mexico to start the revolution 50 years ago without the heavy beard that later became his trademark. Soviet-era MiG fighters and tanks will take part in Saturday's parade, the first in a decade in Havana's Revolution Square, to show Washington that Cuba can still defend itself despite cutting the size of its armed forces by 80 percent in recent years. Analysts say the parade also will serve as a warning to Cubans, whose loyalty to Raul Castro is not the same as for his brother and could falter if he cannot improve their living standards. The average Cuban makes just $15 a month and struggles to get by despite receiving such things as food rations and free health care.

ITN Source | November 29, 2006

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