“dry run’’ theory

[El Presidente]

The Fidel Castro era is over

Published: Tue August 15, 2006

By: Publisher in Cuba Politics > Castro's Cuba

LA Times | Washington Post

Why hasn’t Raul Castro been seen in public much since he became acting president of Cuba?

Would Carlos Lage, a reputed Gorbachev-style reformer in the Havana hierarchy, have travelled to Bolivia if Fidel Castro was on his deathbed?

Was parliamentary speaker Ricardo Alarcon trying to signal that the bearded revolutionary is going to retire when he observed that Fidel will have to lighten his workload when he recovers?

Kremlinology has come to the tropics. Rumour-mongering and reading of tea leaves have filled the void in the absence of any solid information about who’s really calling the shots in Cuba two weeks after Fidel Castro delegated leadership duties to his 75-year-old brother and underwent surgery for intestinal bleeding.

Cuba-watchers, cultural figures and politicians throughout North and South America have been left to scrutinise tiny scraps of news and commentary coming out of Havana and try to glean what they might signify for the future of a country that for nearly 48 years has been defined by one man.

State-run media in Cuba have said little about the illness, treatment or recuperation of Fidel Castro, who deemed his health a “state secret’’ a day after undergoing an abdominal operation July 31. Authorities in Havana have yet to grant foreign media access to the island, and even the handful of Western journalists based there have been relying heavily on outside academics for analysis of the purportedly temporary power transfer.

Some in the Cuban research field even wonder if the ill-explained power shift isn’t a dry run of Castro’s succession plans to see if anyone in the leadership ranks tries to exploit uncertainty or whether security revisions are needed to prevent public unrest or foreign interference.

Most Cuba-watchers agree that no one outside the Castro brothers’ inner circle has any clear picture of what power-brokering or jockeying for position might be going on in the hermetically sealed corridors of the Cuban leadership.

No one on the outside even knows what ails Castro, what kind of surgery he had, where he is convalescing and how his recovery is proceeding.

Florida International University sociology professor Anthony Maingot said the reports that Castro was suffering from intestinal bleeding “could mean anything. It could be one of five different things. We don’t know what it is. Trying to follow this day-to-day is an exercise in futility.’’

Prospects for Castro’s recovery and resumption of governing powers are equally unclear.

Alarcon, a former UN ambassador and the conduit through whom Castro often addresses the outside world, sent analysts into a tizzy of interpretation when he said Castro was recuperating well but would have to slow down and delegate more of the workload when he recovers.

“We need him to be in good health and working,’’ the parliamentary chief said in a radio interview.

That kind of gradual retreat from micromanagement would lead to the most stable scenario for Cubans coming to grips with a post-Castro era, said Philip Peters, a veteran Cuba analyst and vice president of the Lexington Institute think tank in Virginia.

“In an extended transition, there wouldn’t be a single moment when suddenly Castro’s absence is felt or suddenly successors have assumed total responsibility for running Cuban government affairs,’’ Peters said. “There wouldn’t be a single moment when people outside perceive Cuba to be vulnerable.’’

When Cuban writer Roberto Fernandez Retamar declared at a Havana news conference that the country had already undergone a “successful transition,’’some analysts speculated that the elder Castro is all but out of the picture.

“Mid-level Communist Party officials in Cuba are saying Fidel Castro will never resume all of his activities,’’ said Brian Latell, a former CIA Cuba analyst and author of After Fidel. “The Fidel Castro era is over.’’

Susan Kaufman Purcell, director of the University of Miami’s Center for Hemispheric Policy and a former State Department official, conceded that analysts have no way of knowing whether a transition is under way - or even if Cubans want one.

Fidel Castro’s lifelong monopoly of the spotlight might be discouraging his brother from taking the stage now, said Javier Corrales, a political science professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts.

He said he suspects Fidel Castro may be planning a triumphant public comeback, perhaps at the September 11 opening of a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Havana.

Analysts say that Lage, who they expect to be named prime minister or Communist Party leader if Castro dies or passes on those titles, wouldn’t have gone to Bolivia during the first week of El Maximo Lider’s illness if there were credible fears Castro might die.

Analyst Peters is starting to believe the “dry run’’ theory.

“Did you ever wish you could attend your own funeral to see what people say and do when you’re gone?’’ he asked in a paper posted Friday on the institute Web site. Since Castro stunned the world by relinquishing the reins for the first time in his tenure, Peters wrote, “he has witnessed a dress rehearsal for his own death, a matter of no small importance for the security of the Cuban revolution.’’

[greenpimp]

Very interesting. This revolution will not be televised either, eh?

The coup-less coup, coup de no grace, the coup with no culpability.

I figured it was all over when he was pictured in a jogging suit. Fidel? Jog? Impostore!:-D

Sorry I should go back to work.

[Well Armed]

I wouldn't trust anything I read in either the Times or Post but it is an interesting article nevertheless. I wonder what Altadis and Habanos SA are thinking about all this. What are their thoughts/fears/whatever?

[Colt45]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060818/ap_on_..._raul_castro_11

[genevapics]

Did Castro ever marry? Children?

[El Presidente]

» Did Castro ever marry? Children?

Castro as far as I am aware has never married and has had no children.

As for Altadis's positioning, they are poised (within Habanos s.a) to control every aspect of Cuban cigar cultivation, manufacture and distribution.

[aitker]

» Did Castro ever marry? Children?

From what I can gather Fidel Castro has 6 sons from his two marriages and one daughter from an affair he had. Raul Castro has three daughters and one son.

[El Presidente]

» » Did Castro ever marry? Children?

»

» From what I can gather Fidel Castro has 6 sons from his two marriages and

» one daughter from an affair he had. Raul Castro has three daughters and

» one son.

You are probably right ......:-D