Cubas Communist Party Expels Member

April 28, 2006, 7:45PM

Cuba's Communist Party Expels Member
By ANITA SNOW Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

HAVANA — Cuba's Communist Party leadership said Friday it has expelled
one of its younger Politburo members for repeatedly failing to overcome
"errors" such as abuse of authority and arrogance.

Cuban officials had once pointed with pride to Juan Carlos Robinson as
an example of the island's young black leadership. Robinson, now 49, is
from the eastern city of Santiago _ Cuba's second largest city after
Havana _ and had been the party's first secretary for the Santiago
Province since 1994.

But the Communist Party's daily newspaper Granma said Friday that
Robinson had become "a lamentable and unusual case of the inability of a
political cadre to overcome his errors."

Robinson's dismissal comes as Cuba is striving to build up its younger
leadership to eventually take over for the original revolutionary
leaders, many of whom are now in their 70s. President Fidel Castro will
turn 80 in August and his brother and designated successor, Defense
Minister Raul Castro, will turn 75 in June.

"Criticized, warned and exhorted more than once by the (party
leadership) to overcome his failings, he pretended to recognize them and
end them," Granma said. "But that wasn't what happened."

Robinson, Granma said, "had shown attitudes that were dishonest and
incompatible with the conduct of a communist, let alone a cadre of the
party."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/3828278.html