Succession time

The departure of Raul Castro and the selection of a new head of state that didn’t fight in the revolution but rather grew up in it, is a momentous event for Cuba.

But it is not likely to bring a dramatic change in Cuba’s governance, as many outside Cuba seem to expect just because the Castro presidencies have come to the end of their run. Raul Castro remains until 2021 as head of the Communist Party, where policy is made. The next president, all but certain to be Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel who has now been formally nominated, emerges from the party and political system that has set current policies. A clean break is unlikely – the most likely question is how the next president will manage the process of change that the Raul Castro presidency initiated.

And for embarking on that change, Raul Castro’s presidency has been very consequential. He diagnosed Cuba’s economic woes as a threat to the system’s survival, and the party embraced that diagnosis. He led the party to develop and endorse a reform program that is changing Cuban socialism in ways his brother would never have contemplated: a smaller state, more foreign investment, and a substantial private sector.

The state has indeed shrunk by more than half a million personnel; the number of private entrepreneurs has more than tripled and the private sector accounts now for one in four workers; private farming is vastly expanded; and foreign investment flows are starting to expand.

Policies that were in place when he took office in 2006 – banning Cubans from having cell phone accounts in their own name or staying in tourist hotels, requiring advance government permission to travel abroad, banning the sales of cars and residential real estate, denying nearly all applications for new entrepreneurs to get business licenses – are all gone. Even as the one-party state remains in place, these have to count as human rights improvements.

These changes, along with more open U.S. policies and changed attitudes among Cuban emigres, have enabled a transformation in relations with the diaspora. Generations ago, those who left were disdained by the Cuban government and declared themselves exiles. Plenty still choose to stay away, but those who don’t are visiting, buying and improving properties, investing in businesses, and creating millions of avenues of communication and support. This is a quiet, gradual development with strategic significance for Cuba’s economy, politics, and security.

The reforms are incomplete and seem stalled. Agricultural reform is half-done, yielding commensurate results. The government itself admits the need to recharge the foreign investment approval process. The dual currency system persists, with ill effects that ripple throughout the economy. The private sector lacks an adequate supply system. New and potentially impactful laws that were put on the agenda a few years ago have not yet seen the light of day: an enterprise law, a law of associations (to establish how religious denominations and private organizations gain legal status), a media law, an electoral law, and constitutional reforms to limit top officials to two five-year terms in office and to downsize the national legislature.

Why have the reforms not been fully implemented? Part of the answer surely has to do with their complexity, and to political caution on the part of a government that sees potential dislocation in eliminating family food ration books or changing the monetary system overnight. There is also political resistance based on ideological orthodoxy, reluctance to change that exists in any bureaucracy (especially when the changes reduce the size and authority of government agencies), and discomfort with new inequalities in earnings resulting from a vastly expanded private sector.

Cuba’s next president will have to deal with all these tensions, without the benefit of the Castro surname. But absent an unlikely shift in policies that have been approved in two party congresses, the question will remain one of implementation.

And the stark fact remains that there is no viable Plan B. There is no turning back, if for no other reason than that Cuba’s private sector is now essential to employment, family income for millions, and even to the functioning of the tourism industry – and the   government cannot possibly replace the jobs it has created. Cuban governments are virtuousos when it comes to muddling through, but that option does not deliver the growth Cuba needs to keep young Cubans in Cuba, and to sustain popular social services guarantees.

It will be a new political environment, with a premium on consensus-building and coalition management. Cuban politics is about to get more interesting, and if it would get more transparent too, more than a few observers – not to mention Cuban citizens themselves – would appreciate it.