Cuban President Raul Castro has expressed his support for term limits for top leadership positions in a country he and his brother Fidel Castro have led for more than five decades.
“We have reached the conclusion that it is in our interest to limit to a maximum of two consecutive five-year terms service in top state and political roles,” Castro told the 1,000 delegates as he opened the Communist Party Congress on Saturday.
“This is possible and necessary in our current situation,” added the 79-year-old, who took over from Fidel Castro during his brother's health crisis back in 2006.
Raul Castro, who turns 80 in June, said the measure would apply to himself as the country's president.
And he lamented that, in his view, there were no younger Cubans ready to take over the helm of the party and the nation immediately.
“Today, we face the consequences of not having a back bench of adequately prepared replacements who have enough experience and maturity to take on the new and complex duties of managing the party, state and government,” he told delegates.
The president said, without elaborating, that glory-seeking by unnamed parties could stand in the way of the Communist Party being “worthy of the unlimited support of the people and the revolution, for all time.”
Delegates of the meeting will, over four days, vote on economic reforms proposed by Castro and officially relieve his ailing 84-year-old brother as party leader.
It was the sixth Communist Party Congress convened by the only one-party Communist regime in the Americas, and the nation's first in 14 years.
“The confidence and the united majority of Cubans have been tested, with regard to the party and the revolution,” Castro acknowledged on opening the gathering. “It is a unity that is not without differences of opinion.”
Fidel Castro, who has led the party since its founding in 1965, announced three weeks ago that he had resigned the party leadership when he first took ill. He is widely expected to pass that mantle to Raul officially.
The congress will elect a new 100-member Central Committee, as well as the more elite 19-member Politburo and 10-member Secretariat.
The government has said the congress will formally enshrine many economic reforms the government has adopted over the past year. Reforms are desperately awaited in a country where the average salary is $17 a month, domestic food production is inadequate and corruption is widespread.
Among the moves of last year, Havana is eliminating 20 percent of state employees.
To help pick up slack on the unemployment front, it is expanding the categories of legal self-employment to 178, decentralising the food distribution system, expanding allowable areas of foreign investment, slashing subsidies and imposing a tax system.
But the president rejected broad market-minded reforms such as those that have been embraced in China.
Proposals to the Congress of that sort were, Castro said, “in open contradiction to the essence of socialism ... because they were calling for allowing the concentration of property.”
Castro had tough words for dissidents, putting them on notice that they would not find a public space or openness to anti-regime ideas.
“Defending the independence of the achievements of socialism, and our squares and streets, will continue to be the duty of all Cuban patriots,” Castro stressed.
“Let's see what comes out of all this,” said Ana Rosa Rodriguez, a 28-year-old worker in Havana. “It is unbelievable that this country does not produce what it eats.
“Raul is trying to improve the economy and he's started to approve some steps, but you don't see results yet,” she said.
Clad in his general's uniform and surrounded by senior officials, party congress delegates and war veterans, Castro earlier saluted soldiers as they marched through the Plaza de la Revolucion under sunny skies.
Hundreds of thousands of other marching Cubans followed, including thousands of “pioneer” children waving blue, white and red Cuban flags and chanting “Viva Fidel!” “Viva Raul!” “Long Live the Revolution!”
Fidel Castro did not attend the festivities marking exactly half a century after he proclaimed the socialist character of the regime on the eve of the April 17, 1961, landing by 1,400 Cuban exiles armed and trained by the US Central Intelligence Agency.
Within just 72 hours of bloody combat on Playa Larga and Playa Giron some 200 kilometers (125 miles) southeast of Havana, Castro routed the invaders in what Cuba celebrates as “the first great defeat of (US) imperialism in Latin America.” - Sapa-AFP