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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 Era ends as Cuba’s Raul Castro leaves party post
A vehicle on April 18, 2018, drives by a billboard that reads in Spanish “Yes we could, yes we can, yes we will” alongside a picture of then-Cuban president Raul Castro near Havana. Photo: AP
/ AP, HAVANA
Raul Castro said he is stepping down as first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, leaving the island nation without a Castro guiding affairs for the first time in more than six decades and handing control of the party to a younger generation.
The 89-year-old Castro made the announcement in a speech on Friday at the opening of the eighth national congress of the ruling party, the only one allowed in Cuba.
“I concluded my task as first secretary ... with the satisfaction of having fulfilled [my duty] and confidence in the future of the fatherland,” he said in a typically terse, to-the-point finale that contrasted with the impassioned verbal pyrotechnics of his brother, long-time Cuban president Fidel Castro, who died in 2016.
Raul Castro, who was president from 2008 to 2018, did not say who he would endorse as his successor as first secretary, but he previously indicated that he favors yielding control to 60-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel, who succeeded Raul Castro as president in 2018.
Diaz-Canel is the standard bearer of a younger generation of loyalists who have been pushing an economic opening without touching Cuba’s one-party system.
Raul Castro’s retirement ends an era of formal leadership that began with Fidel Castro and the country’s 1959 revolution.
The transition comes at a difficult time for Cuba, with many on the island anxious about what lies ahead.
The COVID-19 pandemic, painful financial reforms and restrictions imposed by the administration of former US president Donald Trump have battered the Cuban economy, which shrank 11 percent last year as a result of a collapse in tourism and remittances.
Long food lines and shortages have brought back echoes of the “special period” that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Discontent has been fueled by the spread of the Internet and growing inequality.
Much of the debate inside Cuba is focused on the pace of reform, with many complaining that the so-called “historic generation” represented by the Castro’s has been too slow to open the economy.
In January, Diaz-Canel pulled the trigger on a plan approved two congresses ago to unify Cuba’s dual currency system, giving rise to fears of inflation.
Diaz-Canel also threw the doors open to a broader range of private companies — a category long banned or tightly restricted — permitting Cubans to legally operate many sorts of self-run businesses from their homes.
This year’s congress is expected to focus on unfinished reforms to overhaul state-run companies, attract foreign investment and provide more legal protection to private business activities.
“One has to step aside for the young people,” said Juana Busutil, a 64-year-old retiree for whom Raul Castro “is going to continue being the leader.”
For most of his life, Raul Castro played second-string to his brother — first as a guerrilla commander and later as a senior figure in government.
For the past decade, Raul has been the face of communist Cuba and its defiance of US efforts to oust its socialist system.
However, he in 2014 reached accords with then-US president Barack Obama that created the most extensive US opening to Cuba since the early 1960s.
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
