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Latest update: 19/04/2011
- communism - Cuba - economy - Fidel Castro
Communist Party's old guard to oversee sweeping reform
Cuban leader Raul Castro (pictured) and a hardline ally have been picked to preside over a sweeping reform of the Cuban economy designed to encourage private enterprise while remaining true to the country's socialist principles.
By News Wires (text)
REUTERS - Cuba's Communist Party selected President Raul Castro and a hardline ally as its top chiefs on Tuesday, entrusting old guard leaders to steer wide-ranging reforms of the Caribbean island's economy.
As expected, Raul Castro, 79, was named to replace his older brother Fidel Castro as first secretary of the ruling party's Central Committee.
But the appointment of First Vice President Jose Machado Ventura, 80, as second secretary signalled that Cuba's aging leadership was not yet ready for new blood at the top of one of the world's last communist states. He is viewed as a hardline communist ideologue.
Castro indicated that while Cuba will reform its economy, he will make sure it stays socialist.
"I assume my last job with the firm conviction and commitment ... to defend, preserve and continue perfecting socialism, and never permit the return of the capitalist regime," he said to great applause from the 1,000 delegates.
The two aging communists will preside over the biggest changes in years to the island's struggling economy, which were approved on Monday at the party's first congress in 14 years.
The package of more than 300 reforms aims to reduce spending by the debt-ridden government, cut subsidies, give more autonomy to state enterprises and encourage more foreign investment as part of a general overhaul of the Soviet-style economy. But central planning will remain.
In two of the bigger issues for average Cubans, the food ration all have received since 1963 will be phased out for those who do not need it and the buying and selling of homes will be permitted for the first time in many years.
Some changes, including the slashing of more than a million government jobs, allowing more self-employment and leasing state land to private farmers, are already in place or under way.
Few new faces in Politburo
Raul Castro and Machado Ventura fought in Cuba's revolution and head the aging revolutionaries who have run the government and resisted U.S. pressure for political change since they helped topple U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
A number of others in the leadership are in their 70s and 80s. The age issue is a concern because President Castro said they had not groomed young leaders to replace them.
Raul Castro, who served as defense minister for 49 years under his older brother before replacing him as president in 2008, said in a speech on Saturday the party was considering limiting future leaders, including himself, to two five-year terms.
Machado Ventura, a medical doctor who joined the Castro brothers early in their revolutionary campaign from the Sierra Maestra mountains, is first in line to succeed Raul Castro.
Raul Castro said 15 people, including him and Machado Ventura, had been named to the powerful Political Bureau. Only three of them were new members -- reforms czar Marino Murillo, first secretary of the Communist Party in Havana Mercedes Lopez Acea, and Economy Minister Adel Izquierdo Rodriguez.
The Politburo also includes five generals, not counting Raul Castro, reflecting the military's key role in the Cuban government.
Former President Fidel Castro, 84, who had already said he relinquished the first secretary position five years ago, made his first appearance at the congress on Tuesday.
Wearing a blue gym suit, he had to be helped to his seat at the front of the congress.
Fidel Castro has said he resigned from his party leader post, without publicly disclosing it, when he fell seriously ill in 2006.
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Comments (2)
Cuba's failure
Fidel Castro has given up on Communism. He sees its failures. But the organization he created are now forcing him to recant. But in his heart it is all over.
The organization is now shifting from Communism to Fascism like Red China did. There's not much difference between the two. Lenin statues will remain, but Hitler's model will run the country.
Cuba
DATE: 4/19/11 ----- TIME POSTED ON FACEBOOK: 3:45 EPT
Fidel Castro just had stepped down as Communist Party leader of Cuba. If you ask me what I really think about CDD communism in Cuba my answer would be this: the whole government in Cuba should step down and resign but regime change must happen from within without any interfering as we have witnessed with the American DD CIA interference in Cuba, and I don’t care if it’s a communist public revolve artistic expressed to create a new government whether it is communism trying to reinventing itself as new age communism or a movement embracing some aspect of true democratic free election, not this two party DD we see in America but rather “Nuvoticly” expressed as new age Phylistic Political Science philosophical movement of a new age Phylistic in Cuba inspire by the Cuban art community inside and outside of Cuba. But such a movement must come from the sole of the people of Cuba inspire by the true meaning of the principles of Human Rights. Phylistic understand what the people of Cuba want and that’s freedom ------------ freedom from political entrapment, freedom from harassment from within the communist regime of present-day Cuba, freedom from the economic enslavement and persecution of communism ill-conceived economic fundamental ----------- freedom for all of Cuba in a new revolution that can best be described as embracing the true meaning of humanity by accepting the full principle and meaning of Human Rights here at the United Nations, and that is the call for multiparty free election ----------- it must be a freedom that echo the desire to express themselves without fear of political persecution and prosecution ------------- these are the words of phylistic Political Science echoing solidarity for all in Cuba, their freedom in the 21st Century is our freedom for humanity ----------- just to see the true meaning of that freedom for these people, freedom to express themselves artistically in music and in the arts is freedom we all can see in ourselves, and it must be freedom for all humanity. These are the words of Phylistic Political Philosophy in Art Nimbious in Concert in the 21st Century chanting the words of “Art Nuvotic” that I know will make all of us even those within the communist party of Cuba who would want to embrace the fundamental principle of humanity but are scared to celebrate Art Nimbious because of fear of the prosecution in Cuba but now has been set free for all humanity to see, Fidel is no longer in power ------------ allow these people to freely express themselves in Cuba I ask the communist party of Cuba ……. etc to be continue on Myspace.com
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