CUBA-POLITICS: Party Leadership Could Undergo Partial Renovation

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Oct 5 1997 (IPS) - The Political Bureau of Cuba’s Communist Party may undergo partial renovation during the party’s fifth congress this week, according to political sources..

In contrast with the socialism of the old Soviet Union and in other parts of Europe, the Communist party here has opened up the leadership to younger members but political sources say still more changes may be made to guarantee what the government has called the “historical continuity” of the Cuban Revolution.

The Fifth Congress of the Communist Party, scheduled for Oct. 8- 10, will elect a Central Committee, currently comprised of 220 members, which in turn will chose a new 25 member polit-bureau which has supreme authority within the party.

“We would be truly short-sighted if we did not lend special attention to party problems,” commented President Fidel Castro in an interview granted to two U.S. reporters in 1985, on one of the few occasions he ever referred to the issue.

At that time Castro already saw a need to “constantly nourish the Party and State with young people,” in order for revolutionary politics to be continued beyond the generation in power at the time. For their part, young political leaders insist that there is no generation friction within the Cuban leadership.

Independent analysts are speculating on who will be promoted to the select leadership organ of the country’s only legal party.

There is also specualtion regarding next January’s elections to the National Assembly of the People’s Power (parliament). The new parliament will choose the members of the councils of State and Ministers, presently presided over by Castro, who is also commander-in-chief of the armed forces and first secretary of the Communist Party.

Talk centres on Carlos Lage, a 45-year-old physician who has become the main executor of economic policy as the executive secretary of the Council of Ministers.

A young group of politicians, aged “30-something”, who head local branches of the party in several provinces and whose work has been recognised by the country’s top leaders are also seen as possibilities. These cadres have emerged from the Union of Young Communists, considered the party’s “nursery” or source of young talent.

In their favour they have more than the dynamism of youth. They avoid the slogans that characterised many Cuban political leaders in the past and, although they are university graduates, their lifestyles are no different from those of the majority of Cubans.

The public is also waiting to see what will happen with a small group of technocrats who in the past few years have played a key role in guiding the Cuban economy.

The fifth party congress is to approve an economic strategy for Cuba for the next few years, a top priority area due to the persisting crisis and the difficult situation of the country’s external finances.

The Communist Party has more than 700,000 members who elected 1,500 delegates to represent them at the congress.

Not only Fidel Castro and his brother Raul – the minister of the armed forces – but several other veterans of the struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista (1952-59) sit on the party’s Political Bureau, which is also presently comprised of government ministers, generals, parliamentarians, a representative of the central union and a scientist.