Hasta la Vista, Senor Castro
Eighty-one year old Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, announced, on Tuesday 18th February 2008, that he is retiring as head of state, 49 years after he seized power in an armed revolution. Castro, who has not appeared in public for almost 19 months after undergoing stomach surgery, said in a message to the communist nation that he would not seek a new presidential term when the National Assembly meets on February 24. A charismatic leader famous for his long tirades, delivered in his green military fatigues, Castro draws mixed reactions, ranging from admiration, especially in the (so-called) Third World for standing up to the United States. He is however considered a tyrant by his opponents, whom they claim has consistently suppressed freedom. His retirement draws the curtain on a political career that spanned the Cold War and survived U.S. enmity, assassination plots by the CIA and the demise of Soviet bloc communism. The National Assembly or legislature is expected to nominate his brother and designated successor, Raul Castro, 76, as president. Raul Castro has been running the country since emergency surgery to stop intestinal bleeding forced Castro to delegate power on July 31, 2006. Cuba has some of the highest rates of education and literacy in the Americas. The Cuban state, through tax receipts, subsidizes education for all its citizens, including university education. Interestingly, the country has also provided state subsidized education to foreign nationals, including U.S. students, who are trained as doctors at the Latin American School of Medicine. The program provides for full scholarships, including accommodation, and its graduates are meant to return to their countries to offer low-cost healthcare. The Cuban government operates a notable national health system and assumes full fiscal and administrative responsibility for the health care of its citizens. Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) claim the country’s healthcare is comparable to that of the USA and the Western countries. Despite such developments, the Cuban government has been accused of numerous human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials, and extra-judicial executions.
Is replacing Castro with his sibling progressive or retrogressive for this nation? Has the time come for this nation’s citizens to ask of themselves if they’re willing to try out alternative leadership? Is Raul Castro, himself a faithful student of Fidel, capable of breaking with this past and egging his country forward? Is Cuba even ready for democracy, now that its bastion of socialism is no longer in office? Will the US government succeed in influencing events in this state, a state of affairs Fidel Castro continually fought against? Either way, Cuba offers the world a fascinating study in succession politics.
