Castro critics call term limits cosmetic
Raúl Castro's proposal of term limits on leadership posts received
little support from Cuban dissidents.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@elnuevoherald.com
Cuban dissidents Sunday dismissed Raúl Castro's call for term limits,
branding it an empty gesture designed only to secure an extension of the
Castro brothers' 52 years in power.
If adopted, the proposal would mean Castro would have to give up power
as head of the government in 2018, when he would be 86 years old. His
brother Fidel surrendered power after emergency surgery in 2006, when he
was 79.
The proposal is positive but "doesn't resolve our essential problem,
which is the monopoly on power by a group whose policies have failed for
50 years," dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe said by telephone
from Havana.
"More than a proposal, it's a threat for the immense majority of the
people because in this way the ruling elites are giving themselves 10
more years of totalitarian continuity,'' human rights activist Elizardo
Sanchez Santa Cruz said.
Castro said at the opening session of Congress Saturday that party
leaders had decided Cuba's lone legal political formation needed to do a
better job of finding younger members for promotions to top jobs. "In
that respect, we have arrived at the conclusion that it's a good idea to
limit fundamental political and government jobs to a maximum of two
consecutive periods of five years," Castro said.
Some analysts praised Castro's talk of term limits as a hint of coming
political changes and a recognition that Cuba must institutionalize its
leadership structure now that those from its "historic" generation — top
participants in the 1959 revolution — are in their 80s and late 70s.
Fidel Castro is 84 and Raul is 79; Vice President Jose Ramon Fernandez
is 87; First Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura is 80; and Vice
President Ramiro Valdes, the youngest and healthiest of the
"historicos," is 78.
An Associated Press dispatch said many Cubans had praised Raul Castro's
talk of term limits, but they also asked why it has taken so long to
come about. "They [Fidel and Raul Castro] realized that the years take
their toll, though it is a shame they have only realized it now, 50
years later," said Miraida Solis, a 72-year-old retiree. "They are all
very old and many people have been asking, 'Where are the young people?' "
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who heads the House
foreign affairs committee, said it was a "farce to suggest that some
sort of term limit scheme administered by the regime would do anything
to change the reality of absolute one-party control."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/17/2172772/castro-critics-call-term-limits.html
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