The Cuban Communist Party is considering reforms this weekend that could impose term limits on its leaders in what would be a striking change in a country that former Cuban president Fidel Castro ruled for 49 years and was succeeded by his brother.
Cuban President Raul Castro said in an April Cuban Communist Party congress that this conference, which started yesterday and is the first in the party’s history, would consider limiting Cuban leaders to two five-year terms.
The party has said it was also pondering age limits for high--ranking officials as it tries to bring younger people into its aging leadership.
PHOTO: AFP
Raul Castro is 80, Cuban Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura is 81 and Fidel Castro, now mostly retired, but still present behind the scenes, is 85. The younger Castro succeeded his elder brother in February 2008 after 49 years as Cuba’s defense minister.
Raul Castro said at the April event that the country’s leaders had not done enough to find younger successors and said they had botched it when they tried.
He and other government officials are in a race against time to secure the gains of the revolution that put Fidel Castro in power in 1959.
Before they become too decrepit or die, they want to find replacements they consider loyal to the idea of keeping Cuba one of the world’s last communist countries.
It has been speculated the party might put some new faces on display at the conference.
Arturo Lopez-Levy, a Cuba expert at the University of Denver, said that term limits would have “democratizing effects” for the country.
“It creates a promise of an inter-generational changing of the guard with stability, since it reduces the possibilities of excessive accumulation of personal power and limits the advantages of the heads of state versus those individuals with different ideas,” he said in an e-mail. “It implies the airing of new ideas inside the system, while reducing the traumas of the retirement of older cadres.”
The party conference comes amid economic reforms that have given Cubans the right to open small businesses and to buy and sell cars, but have not yet included political changes.
The Communist Party is the only legal political party in Cuba and, under a national constitution in effect since 1976, the supreme guiding force of society and state.
Raul Castro has said the party should be more separate from the government and that steps toward that would be considered at the conference.
After building up expectations with his comments in April, Raul Castro tried to lower them in a recent chat with journalists, telling them there was no reason for “so many illusions with the conference, nor to raise expectations.”
However, his daughter Mariela Castro said this week that opening up the political process was important to maintaining the Cuban system.
“Everything that facilitates processes of participation and renewal, but above all wide involvement of the population in the taking of political decisions, is what will guarantee socialism in Cuba,” she said.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Cannabis-based medicines have shown little evidence of effectiveness for treating most mental health and substance-use disorders, according to a large review of past studies published in a major medical journal on Monday. Medical use of cannabinoids has been expanding, including in the US, Canada and Australia, where many patients report using cannabis products to manage conditions such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep problems. Researchers reviewed data from 54 randomized clinical trials conducted between 1980 and May last year involving 2,477 participants for their analysis published in The Lancet. The studies assessed cannabinoids as a primary treatment for mental disorders or substance-use
NATIONWIDE BLACKOUT: US President Donald Trump cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba, strangling the Caribbean island’s already antiquated grid Cuba’s national electric grid collapsed on Monday, the nation’s grid operator said, leaving about 10 million people without power amid a US-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the already obsolete generation system. Grid operator UNE on social media said that it is investigating the causes of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours or days and that this weekend sparked a rare violent protest in the communist-run nation. Officials ruled out a major power plant failure, but had still not pinpointed the root cause of the grid collapse, suggesting a problem with transmission. Officials said that
CONSERVING FUEL: State institutions are to operate only four days a week starting tomorrow, with the measures also applying to schools and universities Sri Lanka on Monday announced a shorter working week to conserve its scarce fuel reserves as it prepares for a prolonged war in the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway through which about 20 percent of global exports pass in peacetime, has been effectively closed by Iran in retaliation over the US and Israeli war against it, now in its third week. Sri Lankan Commissioner-General of Essential Services Prabath Chandrakeerthi said state institutions would operate only four days a week starting tomorrow. The new austerity measures would also apply to schools and universities, and would remain in place indefinitely. “We are
RSS