Cuba's Fidel Castro acknowledges his age in rare speech

Cuba's Fidel Castro acknowledges his age in rare speech
19 April 2016

The leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, has given a rare
speech on the final day of the country's Communist Party congress.
The former president, 89, acknowledged his advanced age but said Cuban
communist concepts were still valid and the Cuban people "will be
victorious".
It was earlier announced that Cuba's President, Raul Castro, would
remain party chief for another five years.
Raul Castro, who himself is 84, is due to step down as president in 2018.
But in Cuba the role of Party secretary is considered just as powerful
as president, so his announcement that he had been re-elected for
another five years was significant.

Analysis: Will Grant, BBC Cuba correspondent
Some have interpreted Fidel Castro's speech as a goodbye to the Cuban
Communist Party faithful. Whether he intended it to be is another
matter, but it certainly contained references to his own mortality not
previously heard from him.
"I'll soon be 90" the former president told the congress, "something I'd
never imagined." His longevity wasn't through effort, he said, but was
rather "a whim of fate".
"Soon I'll be like all the others," he said, "to all our turn must
come." State television showed at least one person in the audience of
loyalists wiping tears from their eyes.
But being Fidel Castro, any admission of fallibility or weakness was
immediately followed by a statement of defiance: "The ideas of Cuban
Communists will remain as proof on this planet that if they are worked
at with fervour and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural
goods that human beings need."
Fidel Castro's speech at the five-yearly congress has been interpreted
by some analysts as valedictory, but the Castro dominance in Cuban
politics looks set to continue for some time yet.

Raul Castro proposed at the weekend that 60 should become the maximum
age for joining the Party's central committee. Cuba has an ageing
leadership - Mr Castro's deputy in the Party, Jose Ramon Machado
Ventura, is 85.
But he also said that there should be a five-year transition period
before that comes into force.
He will continue as Party leader until 2021, a move which the BBC's
correspondent in Cuba, Will Grant, says will disappoint many Cubans who
had hoped that the recent thaw in relations with Washington might also
usher in a new generation of reformers in the Communist Party.

Source: Cuba's Fidel Castro acknowledges his age in rare speech - BBC
News - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36085931