10 July 2007

Castro '08?

Yeah , But which one?

My apologies for the recent light blogging , But …

Other than the Adidas Tracksuit-clad dictator emeritus writing 6,000 word political philosophy freshman term papers (yawn) about the United States’ democratic evolution or the age old East /West animosity among Cubans or the omnipresent Castro apologists, nothing too terribly exiting is being reported on Cuba these days.

The proverbial calm before the storm?

Who Knows?

But there are some interesting cloud formations that may develop…

… or maybe not.

Raul’s Legitimization?

Last night after getting home form the BUCL candle-light vigil, where Henry put me on photographer duty to mercifully spare the camera a cracked lens, (no chance of me getting in front of the lens if I was behind it), I found some interesting tidbits.

First off, Reuters informs us that Raul has “decreed” municipal elections. This begins a process to “elect” a dictator. They have unanimously always picked Fidel.

The article speculates that this time, the resulting National Assembly could pick Raul as the new dictator, thus legitimizing his reign and completing the succession.

I found the article’s wording refreshing. First it says that Raul “decreed” the elections, correctly alluding to his tyranny. Secondly it describes the Cuban National Assembly like this:

Cuba is a one-party state. Candidates to the assemblies do not have to be card-holding members of the Communist Party, but they usually are.

The 603-seat National Assembly is a rubber-stamp parliament which meets only twice a year for a day or so. Its members include Cuba's only cosmonaut, its most famous folk singer, its most successful painter and the country's TV weatherman.

The response to this news was quick but vague:

US will not tolerate the transition from one dictator to another in Cuba, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said, according to Spanish news agency EFE.

Rice, of course, did not go into details as to what form the American “intolerance” would take.

And so it goes...


The US with all its eggs in the biological solution basket and the tropical Taliban running vicious circles around them.

Oh well, the stale winds of stability and the status quo may be clearing those clouds on the horizon after all. I think I can almost hear someone in the State Department saying “You know, Raul is 76, he’s not going to live forever.” “We’ll just wait till HE dies and then we’ll put our plan in place!”






3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How will they stop Fidelito and the rest of the system? I do think we are a bit hard on our gov't at times. I personally imagine the working in State Dept is an extremely challenging job where US interests should come first but there's probably some threats we don't know about from Cuba, so we take it too lightly on them. Like the saying goes, you never know.

Gusano said...

Matt:
no doubt the US needs to act in its national interest first. But they do tie our hands so we free Cubans can act in our own interest. thats probably because "stability" is the US's best interest.

Anonymous said...

I personally think free Cubans should be allowed to due as they please with their money, with regards to travel to Cuba to see family and friends, etc. I don't care what the government's logic is: they're (our gov't) restricting the rights of their own citizens! Plus, I personally think you all could do much more damage to the Communist system in Cuba than the gov't could ever dream of doing.