CUBA:Cuba is likely to experience a complex transition in which different generations of communist leaders negotiate a share of influence, writes Richard Lapper
As president of Cuba's council of state and council of ministers, head of its armed forces and first secretary of its governing Communist Party, Fidel Castro enjoyed undisputed dominance over his country's government.
His resignation yesterday from those positions will set in train a complex transition in which different generations of communist leaders negotiate a share of influence.
The few remaining survivors of the irregular army and their urban supporters who fought a two-year guerrilla war in the late-1950s will play a decisive role, but so will newer groups of officials who have grown up in revolutionary Cuba.
Mr Castro referred to both groups in the letter announcing his departure. "The old guard", including its most well-known member, Raúl Castro, Mr Castro's younger brother, "has the authority and experience to guarantee the succession", he said.
But a younger group - the so-called "intermediate generation" - had learned "with us the almost inaccessible art of organising and leading a revolution" and would play an equally important role, said Mr Castro.
While Raúl, the temporary president, is the most active of the old guard, other prominent members include Ramiro Valdés, the communications minister, and Ricardo Alarcón, a veteran former foreign minister and diplomat who, as president of the national assembly, Cuba's main legislative body, has been the main spokesman on relations with the US.
The leading lights of the "intermediate generation" are Carlos Lage, the 56-year-old secretary of the council of ministers and the de facto prime minister, and Felipe Pérez Roque (42), the foreign minister and Fidel Castro's former private secretary.
A third, even younger, generation of officials, who occupy a number of ministerial and deputy ministerial positions, could also emerge, Cuba-watchers say.
Many of this group were politicised in the dark days of the early 1990s, becoming directly involved in emergency energy, social and health programmes launched by Mr Castro in the wake of the near collapse of the Cuban economy after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Privately, Cuban officials point to men such as Manuel Marrero, the minister of tourism, and Otto Rivero, a vice-president of the council of state, as representative of this group. Cutting across the generations are the differences between those who favour the more ideological and utopian style of Fidel Castro, and those who, like Raúl Castro, would welcome greater pragmatism.
All these groups are represented in the national assembly, which will meet on Sunday to elect a 31-member council of state, a president and a deputy president.
As the assembly meets only occasionally, in day-to-day terms the council of state functions as the legislature. -
Famous Castro quotes
"Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me."
October 16th, 1953, at his trial for the raid on Moncada barracks.
"A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past." January 1961, on the second anniversary of the Cuban revolution.
"I believe that all of us ought to retire relatively young." January 1967, interview in Playboy.
"I was a man who was lucky enough to have discovered a political theory, a man who was caught up in the whirlpool of Cuba's political crisis long before becoming a fully fledged Communist . . . Discovering Marxism was like finding a map in the forest." November 18th, 1971, Chile.
"I have a heart of steel." Reply to reports that he had been diagnosed with a heart condition, June 7th, 1972.
"All criticism is opposition.
All opposition is counter- revolutionary." As quoted in the New Yorker from Socialism of Death by John Newhouse, 1992.
"The leading symbol of the hagiography of US mercantilism." Castro on Santa Claus, December 1998. - (Guardian)