EU-Digest/Sun Sentinal: Cuba - Castro's fate remains in question -- Can EU Capitalize on change of power? - by Ray Sanchez

the Capitol in Havana, Cuba

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Cuba - Castro's fate remains in question -- Can EU Capitalize on change of power? - by Ray Sanchez

Most Cuba watchers think Castro may be setting the stage for his retirement as president of the Council of State, the island's top governing body, which he has led since its creation in the mid-1970s. Members of the National Assembly will select the council's members in March. They caution, however, that Castro has always done things on his terms. Will parliament again name Fidel Castro president of the nation's highest governing body and chief of state later this month, despite his long public absence, or will he assume more of an advisory role? Will brother Raúl be named Cuba's new president? Or will a younger generation take over? The answers lie in a process that rivals a papal selection, rife with speculation and cloaked in secrecy. When the 614-member assembly meets on Feb. 24, its main order of business will be to select members and officers of the Council of State, the island's highest governing body.Cuba watchers have identified three likely post-Castro successors: Carlos Lage, Cuba's 56-year-old vice president and a former physician; Felipe Perez Roque, the 42-year-old foreign minister; and National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón, 70. Among the three Lage seems the person to watch because he is acceptable to multiple circles within the leadership – in the military, in the party, with the Raúlistas." Dan Erikson, an expert on Cuba at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. He said many of Cuba's top leaders would no doubt like to see a formal transfer of power to a younger generation, while Fidel Castro takes on a more ceremonial role. Lage is credited with engineering and implementing the limited reforms that restarted Cuba's economy after the Soviet collapse. The programs included legalizing the dollar, creating small private enterprises and agricultural cooperatives, and increasing foreign investment and tourism. Although Fidel Castro reversed many of the reforms in 2003, Lage is viewed favorably among foreign businessmen in Cuba as a pragmatist open to economic change.

Note EU-Digest: Cuban university students, in a rare public challenge to authorities, openly criticized government restrictions on access to the Internet, hotels and travel abroad. Their criticism in a video circulated this week comes as more Cubans begin to speak out about the shortcomings of Cuba's socialist system, a debate encouraged by acting President Raul Castro since taking over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro in 2006.

The EU has taken some positive and constructive steps in moving this dialog along. French Francis Wurtz, leading a delegation from the Confederal Group of the European United Left of the EU parliament, spoke out against any European Union (EU) sanction to Cuba. "We are for a constructive position and frank exchange of opinions on all issues between the 27 nations of the EU and Cuba," the legislator told the Cuban Granma newspaper.

In Cuba the European ambassador said real change in Cuba would only come when presidential power was handed over to a younger leader, such as Vice President Carlos Lage, the architect of reforms that opened up Cuba to foreign investment and tourism in the 1990s. “Raul will not move while Fidel is around. There are too many vested interests in the political bureaucracy,” he said.

In the Czech Republic the foreign minister recently pledged his country's support to Cuban dissidents, saying that the number of political prisoners in Cuba remains enormously high. Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg made the remarks after meeting in Prague with Cuban dissident Hector Palacios, who was released from Cuban prison in 2006 for health reasons and has been undergoing treatment in Spain. Schwarzenberg himself was expelled from Cuba three years ago, forced to board a plane to Paris one day before a mass dissident assembly that he had planned to attend. At the time Schwarzenber was a member of the upper chamber of Czech parliament, the Senate. Schwarzenberg said: ""I hope that in the near future, in a year or two, Cuba will become a free country with the help of the European Union". Palacios through an interpreter responded, "The Cuban opposition has strengthened ... and the regime of Fidel Castro has been weakened due to his incurable disease, which opens a huge space for changes."

Schwarzenberg has been holding talks with his Spanish counterpart as well as other foreign ministers in the EU toward making a "joint effort" to help change happen in Cuba.

It is certain that change will happen in Cuba sooner or later. The EU can play a major role in this process. It is able to be a counterforce to the radical and irresponsible conservative hard-liners outside Cuba, which seek revenge and upheaval rather than a peaceful and gradual change towards economic independence and democracy in Cuba.