Cuban President Raul Castro is known among Cubans as a pragmatist, not an orator. But he surprised even those accustomed to his reticence on Monday, when he chose not to address an expectant crowd gathered to celebrate Revolution Day in this university town.
Instead, he delegated the task to the 79-year-old vice president, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, who appealed for discipline and patience as Cuba tackles economic reforms and condemned the US for its economic isolation of the island as Castro applauded from his seat.
“We will go forward, step by step, with a sense of responsibility at our own rhythm, without improvising and without haste,” Machado said.
PHOTO: AFP/CUBADEBATE.CU
Castro’s choice not to speak at one of the most important fixtures on the Cuban calendar disappointed some in this central city.
Cubans and officials interviewed on Monday said they could not recall an occasion when either Raul Castro, 79, or his brother Fidel, 83, did not speak on July 26, when Cubans commemorate the 1953 rebel assault on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba, an event often celebrated here as the birth of the revolution against then-president Fulgencio Batista.
The decision puzzled Cuba analysts, who thought Castro might use the occasion to reassert his leadership after his brother’s recent re-emergence into the public sphere after years of seclusion due to illness.
Some suggested that Castro, who took over as president in 2008, might be waiting to announce new economic reforms in the more formal setting of the National Assembly, Cuba’s parliament, when it meets next Monday.
Cubans weaned on Fidel Castro’s oratorical marathons say they appreciate the terse style of his brother, but many say they are disappointed that reforms have been slow and want to be kept in the loop.
Raul Castro has made cutting fat from the public sector and increasing agricultural output central to reforms since he succeeded his brother.
The government has leased thousands of hectares of state-held land to private farmers, raised prices paid for produce and agreed to let farmers buy their own supplies instead of having them allocated by the state.
But it has yet to make good on a pledge to cut the agricultural sector’s huge bureaucracy and problems with distribution and supplies of fertilizer led to a fall in output last year.
Meanwhile, Cuban TV showed Fidel Castro at a somber ceremony in Havana’s Revolution Square on Monday and then in a lengthy meeting with Cuban intellectuals and artists where he answered questions about a variety of topics for more than an hour.
It was the latest in a string of appearances by Castro who has recently emerged from four years of seclusion that followed emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006.
Cuban TV later also showe Raul Castro addressing a Cuba-Venezuela summit on Monday in which the two countries said they had developed 139 projects on such things and energy and food production that they might do together.
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