|
August 6: Cuba in transition
Richard Lapper, Latin America
Editor. The
Financial Times, August 6 2006.
The striking thing about Cuba's long-awaited
leadership crisis is how uneventful it has
been. With President Fidel Castro apparently
recovering smoothly from stomach surgery,
Raúl Castro, the 75 year-old defence
minister, has quietly moved into the top
executive roles. Many of the president's
lesser duties have been handed down to a
range of senior but much younger Communist
Party figures. These include Carlos Lage,
the 54-year old vice president, Felipe Pérez
Roque, the 41-year old foreign minister,
and Francisco Soberon, the 62 year-old president
of the central bank.
So far there has been no sign of any trouble
on the streets. Cubans are simply not responding
to calls for civil disobedience from the
likes of Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the right-wing
Cuban-American US congressman. As Oswaldo
Payá, the dissident leader, put it
in an interview many people identify with
the government and there is an atmosphere
of caution on the streets.
At the weekend the Catholic church, the
only well-organised, properly financed and
fully independent institution in the country,
said that its followers should pray for
the president's health, not the kind of
gesture designed to promote its potential
as a focus of political opposition. In addition,
calls by President George W. Bush and secretary
of state Condoleezza Rice "supporting
a future of freedom for Cuba" have
had a ritualistic feel about them, perhaps
not surprisingly for an administration already
bogged down in three separate crises in
the Middle East. In any event, such messages
are routinely jammed in Cuba, limiting their
impact.
At the same time in Florida, home to many
800,000 Cuban-born Americans, the authorities
- such as the US coast guard - are giving
no encouragement to wilder radical exile
groups aiming to dispatch flotillas of boats
and aircraft to Cuba. Coast Guard officials
said boats trying to make the illegal crossing
would be stopped and sent home.
In fact, the contrast between Cuba in 2006
and Eastern Europe in 1989 when Soviet-backed
governments collapsed one after another,
could not be clearer. As this report puts
it the opposition movement is "divided,
intimidated by the state and infiltrated
by its agents" and "too weak to
exploit Fidel Castro's failing health."
That is not say that things will always
stay the same in Cuba. Few people believe
Mr Castro can return to his full duties,
as he did after fainting in 2001 or breaking
an arm and knee after a fall two years ago.
True, the economy has been getting slightly
better as a result of Venezuelan oil supplies
and cut pressure cookers and electric fans
from China. But for many Cubans day-to-day
life is still a struggle. Austerity will
continue to undermine support for the Communist
Party. Without Fidel Castro's prestige and
charisma it will be harder to keep things
so calm in future. But change is going to
take a long time.
|
