The party conference

Cuba’s Communist Party met over the weekend and decided that top party and government officials will be limited to two five-year terms, which would have put Fidel and Raul Castro themselves into retirement decades ago.

If you are among who might have been anticipating major political reforms or even the dismantling of the socialist system, Raul Castro’s message is that you are confusing your “most intimate hopes with reality.” Clear enough.

The President and party chief also made a frank admission that the party and government do not have a cohort of new leadership ready to take over from his own generation of historicos. But the only decision I see to address this is to replace one fifth of the Central Committee’s membership over the next five years, which sounds like a pace that is only marginally quicker than natural attrition.

His discussion of corruption happened to put U.S. democracy promotion programs into perspective. He said that corruption is “far more damaging than the programs of subversion and interference of the United States government.” He also signaled that major corruption prosecutions are forthcoming, and that legislators have been briefed on the results of investigations that are soon to come to light.

Here’s coverage from the Herald and La Jornada.

The Communist Party conference begins

Cuba’s national Communist Party conference begins today and Granma, the official party daily, sets the stage with a short editorial.

The “essential purpose” of the confab, the editorial says, is “to deepen party work to accelerate the development of society and to guarantee the economic and social policy guidelines (Lineamientos) approved by the sixth Party Congress, based on the concept that there can be no ideology without an economy.”

It also rails against “bureaucratic schemes and attitudes, and old vices such as improvisation, formalism, false unanimity, and opportunism.” It cites the need “to leave behind prejudices against the non-state sector of the economy.” And it cites Raul Castro’s admonition that the hardest “psychological barrier” that party members will need to overcome is that of “being tied to obsolete dogmas and points of view.”

The conference has the power to make changes in party leadership but there is no hint that it will do so.

The party discussion document for the conference is here (pdf).

A critical editorial on that document in Catholic media is noted here.

Here’s coverage from Reuters and NPR.

Odds and ends

• Granma excoriates those Cubans who set up illegal satellite networks and sell access to them, noting that arrests have been made and networks broken up. The article mentions DirecTV and Dish Network links, which sounds like the well known black-market TV operations. It also makes some less-than-clear claims that the United States is financing some of this, including a network that provided international telephone service through independent wireless networks, which sounds like something else altogether. See also AFP English.

• EFE: Cubans account for one third of those granted asylum in Spain in the past year. A comment on this article complains about the dissidents who came with many family members, received benefits, and “in the end complained to international news media that no one helps them here [in Spain] and they are worse off than in Cuba.”

• The Cuban Communist Party’s Lineamientos (economic and social policy guidelines) in (unofficial) English translation, courtesy of Mr. Marce Cameron, president of the Sydney (Australia!) University Cuba-Venezuela Solidarity Club.

• NPR on the new market for cars in Cuba.

• CNN on the expanding flight service to Cuba.

• A Vanity Fair slideshow of photos of Michael Dweck from his book Habana Libre.

The 26th in Ciego de Avila

The 58^th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada barracks was celebrated this morning in Ciego de Avila in a ceremony that wrapped up by 8:15.

The main speech was delivered, as it was last year, by Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura. The text is here and Granma has more coverage.

Machado discussed the “strategic” importance of raising farm output. He noted that enterprises are slow to identify idle lands that can be turned over to producers, the process of turning over the land is slow, and not enough assistance is given to new producers. (See Cuban media report.)

The Communist Party’s Central Committee will meet in the coming days, he said, to discuss the economic reform process. Machado also referred to preparations for a Communist Party conference next January. One of the party’s tasks, he said, will be to work “so that prejudices against the non-state sector of the economy are left behind.” This idea, that communists need to accept and inculcate the attitude that private economic activity is a good thing, has already been announced as one of that meeting’s tasks.

Raul Castro is making a habit of letting someone else play first fiddle at the 26^th of July ceremony. In the past two years at least, he gave a substantive speech soon afterward (see last year’s). This year, maybe the Central Committee meeting will provide that occasion, or a just-announced August 1 meeting of the National Assembly.

Economic reform blueprint is on-line

The final version of the Communist Party’s “Lineamientos,” the policy guidelines for economic reform, is now available here (pdf) in a 48-page publication.

The revisions, the publication explains, resulted from three stages of discussion: a discussion “by all the people” between last December and February, including in the National Assembly; provincial meetings of delegates to the national Communist Party Congress; and committee meetings at the Congress itself.

For each of the 313 policy recommendations, the publication shows in three columns the draft version, the final version, and a brief explanation of changes that were made and “the source of the proposals that originated the change.” For example, recommendation 25 (page six) was expanded to include a more detailed definition of cooperatives, a change that responded to 1,130 comments from throughout the country. A clarification that cooperatives are a “socialist form of collective property” responded to 29 opinions in nine provinces.

The economic battle plan, 2 pesos per copy

The final version of the Communist Party’s “Lineamientos,” the policy guidelines for economic reform, is printed and on the street in Cuba. As best I can tell they are not on-line yet.

The draft version was published last November, it was discussed in meetings across Cuba, and it was debated in last month’s Party Congress. It had 291 numbered policy recommendations.

The final version has 313, and the 48-page publication on the street today includes, according to Granma, “information summarizing the study of each lineamiento and the reasoning behind the changes that were made based on the results of broad public debate, which express the will of our people contained in the policy of the Party, Government, and the State.”

The draft version cost one peso, the final sells for two.

The guidelines themselves do not change government policies. If the past few years’ experience is a guide, the policy changes will roll out one by one, often with no fanfare, in the form of new regulations and decrees published in the Gaceta Oficial.

Early reports indicate that the Lineamientos reiterate the decision to “establish the buying and selling of homes;” a new policy with potentially huge implications. AP says they encourage Cubans to form cooperatives outside the agricultural sector, another change of potentially high impact. Also, the document takes another crack at the long-discussed idea of allowing Cubans to travel freely: “Study a policy that allows Cubans living in the country to travel abroad as tourists,” it says.

Here are stories from AP, AFP, CNN, and Reuters.

For background: the November 2010 draft version, and my comments on the highlights, on the big enchilada of the process, and on the implications of opening a normal market in residential property.

More later.