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Cuba to Continue One-party System-Raul Castro

In a speech by the Cuban President Raul Castro on Sunday, the president who took over from Fidel Castro his elder brother has reiterated that … Continue reading Cuba to Continue One-party System-Raul Castro


Cuba to Continue One-party System-Raul Castro

In a speech by the Cuban President Raul Castro on Sunday, the president who took over from Fidel Castro his elder brother has reiterated that the country would continue to operate a one-party system to be in contrast with Imperialism party system operated by United States and that there were no plans whatsoever to change the party system in the future, he said at a communist party conference.

Cuba to Continue One-party System-Raul Castro

He also said the previously announced plans to put term limits on the country’s leaders were not fully official, but could gradually go ahead.

In introducing reforms into Cuba to assure citizens of a better life,the weekend’s conference the first in the history of the party reforms gave Cubans the right to open small businesses and to buy and sell cars but nothing in the reforms promised significant political change.

Castro held to that line in his speech when he railed against the United States, Cuba’s longtime ideological foe, and its political system and said the Caribbean island 90 miles (145 km) from Florida intended to remain a one-party state.

The Communist Party is the only legal political party in Cuba and, under a national constitution in effect since 1976, the supreme guiding force of the society and the state.

While the party will remain unchallenged, Castro said the country’s leaders will be limited to two consecutive five-year terms, an idea he first mentioned publicly at a party congress in April.

Castro said the party was still working out the legal measures for term limits, which will require a change to the constitution, but that implementation could begin “gradually, even before the constitution is changed.”

He did not explain how that would be done or when it might start.

Term limits would be a break from the past in Cuba, where Fidel Castro ruled for 49 years after the 1959 revolution and was succeeded by Raul Castro, his younger brother.

They also could be a step toward bringing new blood into the government to replace the country’s ageing leaders.

Raul Castro is 80, his vice president Jose Ramon Machado Ventura is 81 and Fidel Castro, now mostly retired but still present behind the scenes, is 85.

There was talk before the conference that the party also could impose age limits on leaders and promote new, younger people into the party hierarchy, but there had been no mention of either.

Speaking about the recent death of jailed Cuban dissident Wilmar Villar who died from the effects of a 56-day hunger strike and what opposition activists say was mistreatment by the Cuban government, Castro spoke out against “the anti-Cuban campaign.”