HAVANA: Cubans will find out on Tuesday whether President Raul Castro’s call for younger blood in the Communist Party will mean some of the septuagenarian and octogenarian leadership in power since a 1959 revolution will retire now or not for another five years.
Castro, 84, has called for sweeping changes in the management of Cuba’s Soviet-style command economy and wants top leaders to retire at 70, but he also has made clear that such changes must not be rushed. The Communist Party, which was founded in 1965 and is seen as more powerful in Cuba than the government, will reveal its new leadership at the closing session of the party congress later on Tuesday. Major changes would be a surprise. Party delegates chose the members of the party’s top governing bodies on Monday but the results have not yet been announced. Among those voting was former president Fidel Castro, 89, who sent his vote in an envelope carried by his younger brother Raul. Fidel Castro also was seen at the congress on Tuesday.
At the weekend, Raul Castro proposed 60 as the maximum age for joining the party’s central committee with a limit of two five-year terms. But he said the next five years would be for transition and such rules would not be fully applied until then. The congress, held no more than twice a decade, is not due to reconvene until 2021. Castro steps down as Cuba’s president in 2018 and it is not yet clear whether he will stay on as party leader for the full five-year term if re-elected on Tuesday. His No. 2 in the party, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, 85, fought alongside Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara in their rebellion against a U.S.-backed government in the 1950s.