By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Tuesday, February 19, 2008
HAVANA -- An ailing Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba's president Tuesday after nearly a half-century in power, saying he was retiring and will not accept a new term when the new parliament meets Sunday.
"I will not aspire to nor accept -- I repeat, I will not aspire to nor accept -- the post of President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief," read a letter signed by Castro published early Tuesday in the online edition of the Communist Party daily Granma. The announcement effectively ends the rule of the 81-year-old Castro after almost 50 years, positioning his 76-year-old brother Raul for permanent succession to the presidency. Fidel Castro temporarily ceded his powers to his brother on July 31, 2006, when he announced that he had undergone intestinal surgery. Since then, the elder Castro has not been seen in public, appearing only sporadically in official photographs and videotapes and publishing dense essays about mostly international themes as his younger brother has consolidated his rule. A new National Assembly was elected in January, and will meet for the first time Sunday to pick the governing Council of State, including the presidency that Fidel Castro has held since the assembly's 1976 creation. Before 1976, Castro was president under a different government structure, and previously served as prime minister. There had been wide speculation about whether Castro, Cuba's unchallenged leader since 1959, would continue as president. "My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath. That's what I can offer," Castro wrote. But, he continued, "it would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer. This I say devoid of all drama." Castro said Cuban officials had wanted him to remain in power after his surgery. "It was an uncomfortable situation for me vis-a-vis an adversary that had done everything possible to get rid of me, and I felt reluctant to comply," he said in a reference to the United States. The resignation opens the path for Raul Castro's succession to the presidency, and the full autonomy he has lacked in leading a caretaker government. The younger Castro has raised expectations among Cubans for modest economic and other reforms, stating last year that the country requires unspecified "structural changes" and acknowledging that government wages that average about $19 a month do not satisfy basic needs. As first vice president of Cuba's Council of State, Raul Castro was his brother's constitutionally designated successor and appears to be a shoo-in for the presidential post when the council meets Sunday. More uncertain is who will be chosen as Raul's new successor, although 56-year-old council Vice President Carlos Lage, who is Cuba's de facto prime minister, is a strong possibility. In the pre-dawn hours, most Cubans were unaware of Castro's message. Havana's streets were quiet, and there was not even any movement at several party-run neighborhood watch groups known as Revolutionary Defense Committees in Old Havana.It wasn't until 5 a.m., several hours after Castro's message was posted on the Internet, that official radio began reading the missive to early risers across the island. President Bush was notified of Castro's resignation by his national security adviser while traveling in Africa, Bush spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. Castro rose to power on New Year's Day 1959 and reshaped Cuba into a communist state 90 miles from U.S. shores. The fiery guerrilla leader survived assassination attempts, a CIA-backed invasion and a missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Ten U.S. administrations tried to topple him, most famously in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. His ironclad rule ensured Cuba remained communist long after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe. Monarchs excepted, Castro was the world's longest ruling head of state. "The adversary to be defeated is extremely strong," Castro wrote Tuesday, referring to the United States. "However, we have been able to keep it at bay for half a century." Raul Castro had long been his brother's designated successor. The longtime defense minister had been in his brother's rebel movements since 1953 and spent decades as No. 2 in Cuba's power structure. The United States, bent on ensuring neither brother is in power, built a detailed plan in 2005 for American assistance to ensure a democratic transition on the island of 11.2 million people after Fidel Castro's death. But Cuban officials insisted there would be no transition, saying the island's socialist political and economic systems would outlive Castro. Castro's supporters admired his ability to provide a high level of health care and education for citizens while remaining fully independent of the United States. His detractors called him a dictator whose totalitarian government systematically denied individual freedoms and civil liberties such as speech, movement and assembly. The United States was the first country to recognize Castro after his guerrilla movement drove out then-President Fulgencio Batista in 1959. But the two countries soon clashed over Castro's increasingly radical path. Castro seized American property and businesses and invited Soviet aid. On April 16, 1961, Castro declared his revolution to be socialist. A day later, he defeated the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion. The United States squeezed Cuba's economy and the CIA plotted to kill Castro. Undaunted, the Cuban president supplied troops and support to revolutionaries in Africa and Latin America. Hostility over Cuba reached its peak on Oct. 22, 1962, when President Kennedy announced there were Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. After a tense week of diplomacy, Soviet Premier Nikita S. Krushchev pulled out the weapons. With the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, Castro eventually made peace with many governments that once shunned him. Pope John Paul II visited the island in January 1998.The loss of Soviet aid plunged Cuba into financial crisis, but the economy slowly recovered in the late 1990s with a tourism boom. Castro later reasserted control over the economy, stifling the limited free enterprise tolerated during more difficult times. Fidel Castro Ruz was born in eastern Cuba, where his Spanish immigrant father ran a prosperous plantation. His official birthday is Aug. 13, 1926, although some say he was born a year later. He attended Roman Catholic schools and the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees. Castro launched his revolutionary battle as a young man, organizing an unsuccessful July 26, 1953 attack on a military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago. Later freed under a pardon, Castro went to Mexico and organized a rebel army that returned to Cuba and rallied support in the Sierra Maestra mountains. His rebels took power when Batista was forced to flee. Entering Havana triumphantly, Castro declared: "Power does not interest me, and I will not take it."
By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Sunday, February 24, 2008
HAVANA -- Cuba's parliament named Raul Castro president on Sunday, ending nearly 50 years of rule by his brother Fidel but leaving the island's communist system unshaken.
In a surprise move, officials bypassed younger candidates to name a 77-year-old revolutionary leader, Jose Ramon Machado, to Cuba's No. 2 spot -- apparently assuring the old guard that no significant political changes will be made soon. The retirement of the ailing 81-year-old president caps a career in which he frustrated efforts by 10 U.S. presidents to oust him. Raul Castro stressed that his brother remains "commander in chief" even if he is not president and proposed to consult with Fidel on all major decisions of state -- a motion approved by acclamation. Though the succession was not likely to bring a major shift in the communist government policies that have put Cuba at odds with the United States, many Cubans were hoping it would open the door to modest economic reforms that might improve their daily lives. In his first speech as president, Raul Castro suggested that the Communist Party as a whole would take over the role long held by Fidel, who formally remains its leader. The new president said the nation's sole legal party "is the directing and superior force of society and the state." "This conviction has particular importance when because the founding and forging generation of the revolution is disappearing," Raul Castro added. The U.S. has said the change from one Castro to another would not be significant, calling it a "transfer of authority and power from dictator to dictator light." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday Cubans have a right "to choose their leaders in democratic elections" and urged the government "to begin a process of peaceful, democratic change by releasing all political prisoners, respecting human rights, and creating a clear pathway towards free and fair elections." Her statement, issued shortly before parliament met, called the developments a "significant moment in Cuba's history." Cuba's parliament chose a new 31-member ruling body known as the Council of State to lead the country. The council's president serves as the head of state and government. The vote ended Castro's 49 years as head of the communist state in America's backyard. He retains his post as a lawmaker and as head of the Communist Party. But his power in government has eroded since July 31, 2006, when he announced he had undergone emergency intestinal surgery and was provisionally ceding his powers to Raul. The younger Castro has headed Cuba's caretaker government in the 19 months since then, and Fidel Castro has not appeared in public. In his final essay as president, Castro wrote that preparations for the parliament meeting "left me exhausted," and he said he did not regret his decision to step down. "I slept better than ever," he wrote in the commentary published on Friday. "My conscience was clear and I promised myself a vacation." In Old Havana, Maria Martinez, a 67-year-old retiree, watched the announcement on a Chinese-made television in her dark living room."He's a trustworthy man," she said. "He won't make mistakes." "All we really want is peace and tranquility," she added. Her 33-year-old neighbor, Raul Rodriguez, let out a long sigh and nodded as the announcement of Raul Castro's election was made. "He's hard, he's tough," said Rodriguez, who wore an NYPD baseball cap sent by a relative in the U.S. But a 51-year-old man hefting a wide metal tray of homemade guava and coconut pies through the streets near Havana's train station said "this country, it's like jail." "They close the doors and say 'The president is Peter or the president is Paul' and everyone responds 'Good, it's Peter or Paul.' There's no openness," said the man named Isidro, who like many Cubans declined to give his last name to a foreign journalist when criticizing the government. Machado, the new No. 2, fought alongside the Castro brothers in the Sierra Maestra during the late 1950s and is a key Communist Party ideologue. Cuba's young guard apparently will have to wait a little longer. Cabinet secretary Carlos Lage, 56, who is associated with the modest economic reforms of the 1990s, had been among the most visible Cuban officials since Fidel Castro fell ill and was considered a strong candidate to replace Raul as first vice president. Machado and Lage were joined by four other vice presidents: Juan Almeida Bosque, 80, a historic revolutionary leader; Interior Minister Abelardo Colome Ibarra, 68; Esteban Lazo Hernandez, 63, a longtime Communist Party leader, and Gen. Julio Casas Regueiro, 71, Raul Castro's No. 2 at the Defense Ministry. The council secretary remained Dr. Jose M. Miyar Barrueco, 75, physician and historic revolutionary leader, and longtime aide to Fidel Castro. Fidel was among the 614 members of parliament elected on Jan. 20 but his seat was empty at Sunday's gathering. As the names of the new National Assembly's members were read aloud, mention of the absent Castro drew a standing ovation. Parliament gave another standing ovation to Raul. The session closed with shouts of "Viva Fidel!" In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez reaffirmed his economic and political support of Cuba when he took a telephone call from Raul Castro after the session. Chavez also sent a message to his ally Fidel, whom he visited numerous times during his illness. "Fidel, comrade," Chavez said, "I send you a hug. You continue to be El Comandante." Earlier Sunday, Chavez scoffed at the idea of a transition in Cuba, saying "the transition occurred 49 years ago," from U.S.-dominated capitalism to socialism.
Logged
