3 days ago
HAVANA (AFP) — Cuba's ailing leader Fidel Castro has defended naming his
brother Raul to stand in for him last year, saying no one in the
communist country's national assembly saw it as nepotism.
In a letter to the assembly Friday, the 81-year-old strongman also again
made an ambiguous suggestion that he could give up the presidency,
saying that he had stopped clinging to power.
"There was a stage when I thought I knew what had to be done and I
wanted the power to do it," he admitted, saying it was due to "an excess
of youthfulness and deficit of conscience."
"What made me change? Life itself, tempered by the profound thought of
(Jose) Marti and the classics of socialism," Castro said, in the letter
read by assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon.
In the letter Castro also referred to criticisms made by Washington that
in choosing his brother Raul to steer the country he was being
anti-democratic and reserving power to his family.
"In the proclamation signed on July 31, 2006, none of you saw it at all
as an act of nepotism nor as a usurping of the functions of the
assembly," he told the body.
The communist leader turned over his responsibilities to Defense
Minister Raul Castro "temporarily" in July 2006 to recuperate from
surgery. He has not been seen in public since, and there have been no
clear reports on the state of his health.
The letter was the second time in a month that Castro, who has led Cuba
since 1959, made an opaque reference to giving up power.
On December 17, Castro hinted in a letter read on television that he
might step aside when he said that he would not cling to office or
obstruct the rise of a new generation of leaders.
Meanwhile, Alarcon told the assembly Friday that Cuba's coming elections
needed to be a "vigorous response" to the United States.
"The elections of January 20 must be a demonstration of patriotic unity,
the country's vigorous response to those who tried to destroy us for
half a century," he said, in a speech published Saturday in local media.
The January polls will choose the national assembly, with the number of
candidates -- 614 -- equal to the number of seats to be filled.
Once the new assembly has been constituted, the deputies will elect the
ruling Council of State, with 31 members, which will then choose the
president.
Fidel Castro was renominated for the assembly on December 2, meaning he
could resume the presidency.
But experts saw his December 17 statement as a suggestion that he might
decline the leadership this time.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jAE10zGlNB1p9fAkB8Gi8yNoQ1tw
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