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http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Cuban-leader-proposes-term-limits
Cuban leader proposes term limits
HAVANA, Cuba (CMC) – Cuba’s President Raul Castro has proposed setting term limits for public office in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean country where he and his brother, Fidel, have ruled for more than 50 years.
“We have arrived at the conclusion that it is advisable to limit the fundamental political and state offices to a maximum period of two consecutive periods of five years,” said Castro in a speech opening the Sixth Communist Party Congress, the first such gathering since 1997.
Castro heralded a battery of changes intended to lift the island out of economic despair and stagnant thinking, adding that term limits are also necessary to rejuvenate a political system dominated by aging loyalists of the revolution.
At the top are himself and Fidel, 84, who permanently gave up presidential power in 2008 and last month announced that he was no longer head of the Communist Party, either.
After his 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro remained in power until 2006, when illness forced him to hand the reins over to his younger brother, Raul. Raul Castro was officially elected in 2008.
President Castro’s proposal to curtail terms came on a day that swung between embracing the past and grasping for the future.
In the morning, Cuba looked back, with fighter jets, gleaming olive-coloured tanks and hundreds of thousands of marchers chanting in fervour over the failed invasion by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs 50 years ago, still a celebrated triumph here.
In the afternoon, Castro looked ahead, swearing allegiance to socialism while bowing to the cold realities of this country’s crippled economy.
He called for the elimination of monthly ration books that most Cubans use to buy goods, and for continued expansion of private enterprise, cajoling his compatriots to shake off inertia and embrace an “updating” of the Cuban model.
“No country or person can spend more than they have,” Castro told 1,000 delegates gathered for the party congress, which is expected to yield broad changes in the Cuban system before it concludes on Tuesday.
“Two plus two is four. Never five, much less six or seven, as we have sometimes pretended,” he said.
Speaking for more than two hours — and for more than an hour after he declared, “Everything about the revolution has been said” — Castro gave assurances that socialism would prevail and promised Cubans continued free access to health care and education.
But he said government handouts like the ration books were an “unsupportable load on the economy” that discouraged people from working.
He lauded the expanded opportunities already extended to entrepreneurs; the government has granted 180,000 licenses for small businesses like coffee vendors, fast-food stands and house rentals, with tens of thousands more expected to be issued in the coming months.
Yet, he appeared to reject as “contrary to socialism” the loosening of rules on buying and selling homes, a change some analysts had speculated was coming.
The Cuban economy is sinking, racked by the lingering effects of the global recession of 2008, a free fall in the sugar market and, the government argues, the United States’ economic embargo.
Political observers say Castro’s proposals may be the most significant changes since businesses in Cuba were nationalized in 1968.
Though Castro had already warned that the state could no longer afford to keep four-fifths of the work force on its payrolls, he indefinitely delayed this month the layoffs of 500,000 state workers announced last year.
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Cuban-leader-proposes-term-limits#ixzz1Jo1BZOTf
Cuban leader proposes term limits
HAVANA, Cuba (CMC) – Cuba’s President Raul Castro has proposed setting term limits for public office in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean country where he and his brother, Fidel, have ruled for more than 50 years.
“We have arrived at the conclusion that it is advisable to limit the fundamental political and state offices to a maximum period of two consecutive periods of five years,” said Castro in a speech opening the Sixth Communist Party Congress, the first such gathering since 1997.
Castro heralded a battery of changes intended to lift the island out of economic despair and stagnant thinking, adding that term limits are also necessary to rejuvenate a political system dominated by aging loyalists of the revolution.
At the top are himself and Fidel, 84, who permanently gave up presidential power in 2008 and last month announced that he was no longer head of the Communist Party, either.
After his 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro remained in power until 2006, when illness forced him to hand the reins over to his younger brother, Raul. Raul Castro was officially elected in 2008.
President Castro’s proposal to curtail terms came on a day that swung between embracing the past and grasping for the future.
In the morning, Cuba looked back, with fighter jets, gleaming olive-coloured tanks and hundreds of thousands of marchers chanting in fervour over the failed invasion by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs 50 years ago, still a celebrated triumph here.
In the afternoon, Castro looked ahead, swearing allegiance to socialism while bowing to the cold realities of this country’s crippled economy.
He called for the elimination of monthly ration books that most Cubans use to buy goods, and for continued expansion of private enterprise, cajoling his compatriots to shake off inertia and embrace an “updating” of the Cuban model.
“No country or person can spend more than they have,” Castro told 1,000 delegates gathered for the party congress, which is expected to yield broad changes in the Cuban system before it concludes on Tuesday.
“Two plus two is four. Never five, much less six or seven, as we have sometimes pretended,” he said.
Speaking for more than two hours — and for more than an hour after he declared, “Everything about the revolution has been said” — Castro gave assurances that socialism would prevail and promised Cubans continued free access to health care and education.
But he said government handouts like the ration books were an “unsupportable load on the economy” that discouraged people from working.
He lauded the expanded opportunities already extended to entrepreneurs; the government has granted 180,000 licenses for small businesses like coffee vendors, fast-food stands and house rentals, with tens of thousands more expected to be issued in the coming months.
Yet, he appeared to reject as “contrary to socialism” the loosening of rules on buying and selling homes, a change some analysts had speculated was coming.
The Cuban economy is sinking, racked by the lingering effects of the global recession of 2008, a free fall in the sugar market and, the government argues, the United States’ economic embargo.
Political observers say Castro’s proposals may be the most significant changes since businesses in Cuba were nationalized in 1968.
Though Castro had already warned that the state could no longer afford to keep four-fifths of the work force on its payrolls, he indefinitely delayed this month the layoffs of 500,000 state workers announced last year.
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Cuban-leader-proposes-term-limits#ixzz1Jo1BZOTf
