• Fidel Castro makes surprise parliament appearance amid leadership speculation

    Cubadebate.cu

    Fidel and Raul Castro at the opening session of the National Assembly in Cuba on Sunday, Feb. 24.

    By Marc Frank, Reuters

    HAVANA — Retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro made a rare public appearance Sunday by joining the opening session of the National Assembly, state media reported amid speculation the gathering could give clues on planning for a future leadership succession.

    Since falling ill in 2006 and ceding the presidency to his brother, Fidel Castro has given up all official positions except as a deputy in the National Assembly. At Sunday's session, he took his seat beside brother President Raul Castro, only the second time he has graced the assembly chambers since his illness and the first since 2010.

    Cubadebate.cu

    Fidel Castro at the opening session of the National Assembly on Sunday, Feb. 24.

    Fidel Castro's surprise appearance added to expectations, fueled by his brother, that the usually routine session might shed light on future leadership of the communist-run nation.

    In a back and forth with reporters on Friday, Raul Castro joked about his eventual retirement and urged them to pay attention to Sunday's conclave, which is closed to foreign journalists.


    "I'm going to turn 82; I have a right to retire already," he said. "You don't believe me? Why are you so incredulous?" he said.

    The 612 deputies, who were elected in an uncontested vote February 3, named a new 31-member Council of State with Raul Castro as president, despite his quip.

    The National Assembly meets for just a few weeks each year and delegates its legislative powers between sessions to the Council of State, which also functions as the nation's executive through the Council of Ministers it appoints.

    Governments, Cuba watchers and Cubans were watching to see if any new, and younger, faces among the Council of State members, in particular its first vice president and five vice presidents, with an average age over 70.

    Miguel Diaz-Canel, a 52-years old electrical engineer and university professor who is a rising star on Cuba's political scene, was named first vice president of Cuban Council of State and first vice president of Cuban Council of Ministers, hinting at some, relatively young, new blood for the future.

    Esteban Lazo, member of the political bureau of the Community Party and vice president of the Council of State, 68, was named parliament president Sunday to replace a retiring Ricardo Alarcon, who served for 20 years.

    The new government is almost certain to be the last headed up by the Castro brothers and the generation that has ruled Cuba since they swept down from the mountains in the 1959 revolution that led to a long-running feud with Washington.

    Raul Castro, 81, would begin his second term on Sunday, theoretically leaving him free to retire in 2018, aged 86.

    Eighty percent of the parliament's 612 members, with an average age under 50, were born after the Revolution.

    Raul Castro, who officially replaced his ailing brother as president in 2008, has repeatedly called for senior leaders to hold office for no more than two, five-year terms.

    "Although we kept on trying to promote young people to senior positions, life proved that we did not always make the best choice," Castro said at a Party Congress in 2011.

    "Today, we are faced with the consequences of not having a reserve of well-trained replacements....It's really embarrassing that we have not solved this problem in more than half a century," he said.

    The 2011 party summit adopted a more than 300-point plan to "update" Cuba's Soviet-style economic system, designed to transform it from one based on collective production and consumption to one where individual effort and reward play a far more important role.

    Across-the-board subsidies are being replaced by the country's first comprehensive tax code and targeted welfare.

    Fidel Castro, these days referred to as the "historic leader of the revolution," is no longer seen as wielding real power, but he has maintained a public presence through his writings, meetings with important visitors and rare appearances.

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    Raul Castro announces he will retire in 2018

  • Cuba's Fidel Castro makes first extended public appearance since 2010

    Marcelino Vazquez / Ain Foto via Reuters

    Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, 86, speaks to reporters at a polling station in Havana on Sunday. The appearance marked Castro's first extended period in the public eye since 2010.

    By Marc Frank, Reuters

    HAVANA — Retired leader Fidel Castro voted in Cuba's general election on Sunday and chatted with well-wishers and local reporters in Havana for more than an hour in his first extended public appearance since 2010.

    Castro had voted from his home in three previous elections since taking ill in 2006 and ceding power to his brother Raul two years later.

    A stooped, snow-white-bearded Castro, 86, was seen on state-run television as he cast his ballot in the late afternoon, wearing a blue plaid shirt and light blue jacket.

    The announcer said Castro talked about efforts to reform the economy, Latin American integration and other matters, including ailing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

    He was heard in a weak voice praising popular participation in Sunday's election.

    "The people are truly revolutionary. They have really sacrificed. We don't have to prove it; history will. Fifty years of the (U.S.) blockade and they haven't given in," he said.

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    Cubans went to the polls to elect a Communist Party-selected slate of 612 deputies to the National Assembly and more than 1,000 delegates to provincial assemblies during a time of change in how they live and work but not in how they vote.

    President Raul Castro and other leaders were also shown on television casting their ballots and commenting on the importance of the election as a show of support for reforms and independence from the United States.

    Raul Castro is decentralizing the state-dominated economy, allowing more space for private initiatives in agriculture and retail services, and he has lifted many restrictions on personal freedoms, such as travel and buying and selling homes and cars.

    He has also introduced term limits (two five-year stints) for top government posts, but he has drawn the line at legalizing other political parties and contested elections.

    Ted Piccone, deputy director of foreign policy at the Washington think tank the Brookings Institution, said Raul Castro's policies provide interesting insights for observers of the government, which continues to have a tense relationship with the United States.

    "The one-party elections in Cuba, alongside steady but slow progress on opening the economy, represent how the current regime intends to manage change on the island -- giving the people more space to participate in the economy while controlling their role in politics and civic life," Piccone said. 

    Some 95 percent of Cuba's 8.7 million residents over 16 years of age were expected to cast ballots with polling stations on just about every block. Abstention is frowned upon.

    'All revolutionaries'
    Reuters talked with more than half a dozen voters before they entered the polls in Havana. None of them knew the candidates on the national slate from their districts.

    "What's certain is they are all revolutionaries and that's what matters," said retiree Eduardo Sanchez.

    "I vote because I feel I have to, and it doesn't really matter because the deputies have no power anyway," said one young woman, who declined to give her name.

    The curious read biographies of candidates posted at the polls, then cast paper ballots in cardboard voting boxes guarded by school students.

    Others simply entered the polls and checked a box for the entire slate.

    The candidates were equal to the number of positions up for a vote, the only alternative being to not vote for a certain candidate or leave blank or spoil the ballot.

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

  • Pope, Raul Castro meet, but Cuban official vows no political reform

    On Wednesday Pope Benedict will hold a giant mass in Revolution Square. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.

    By Reuters

    Pope Benedict and Cuban President Raul Castro met on Tuesday for talks on a papal trip that has sparked hopes for economic and political change, but one national leader said there would be no political reform on the communist island.

    Cuban television showed the pope and Castro in the Palace of the Revolution at the beginning and end of an hour-long meeting, but they did not speak to the press.

    They were expected to affirm improving relations between the government and the Roman Catholic Church and discuss the Church's desire for a greater role in Cuba.

    A Vatican spokesman said former leader Fidel Castro, who may or may not meet with Benedict, did not attend the talks.

    Benedict arrived for what is the second papal trip to Cuba in history at a time when Raul Castro has initiated reforms boosting private enterprise and reducing the state's role. His aim is to strengthen the country's struggling Soviet-style economy and assure the future of communism.

    He wants to cut 1 million jobs from bloated government payrolls, which is about 20 percent of Cuba's total workforce of 5.2 million.

    To help deal with the social implications of the reforms, Raul Castro has embraced the Church as interlocutor on social issues and has improved relations that were sour for decades after Cuba's 1959 revolution.

    Some Cubans have expressed hope that economic changes would be accompanied by political change in the country where the only legal political party is the Communist Party, but Marino Murillo, a vice president in the Council of Ministers and the country's economic reforms czar, told reporters that was not in the cards.

    Some who had fled the revolution led by Fidel Castro traveled from Miami to Cuba to see Pope Benedict. NBC's Mark Potter reports.

    "In Cuba there won't be political reform," he said in a press conference at Havana's Hotel Nacional, the international press center for the pope visit.

    "In Cuba, we are talking about the update of the Cuban economic model to make our socialism sustainable," he said.

    "We have studied what the whole world is doing, but we will update our socialist model with very Cuban characteristics."

    Murillo's comments were not new, but stood out in the context of Benedict's visit.

    The pope, who arrived in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba on Monday and gave a public Mass there, began Tuesday at a shrine to the Virgin of Charity, Cuba's patron saint, in the mountainside town of El Cobre.

    He urged Cubans to "work for justice" as their country changes and prayed before an icon of the Virgin for "those deprived of freedom, those who are separated from their loved ones," in a clear reference to political prisoners as well as Cuban exiles.

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