Is Cuba on the verge of major political reform?

Is Cuba on the verge of major political reform?
By Nick Miroff March 5 at 3:12 PM

Cuba's President Raul Castro points to the press during the closing of
the legislative session at the National Assembly in Havana in December.
In an online forum in state media this week, readers were given unusual
latitude to ask questions bearing on the country's political system,
prompting speculation that the 83-year-old president might be weighing
major reforms. (Ramon Espinosa/AP)
HAVANA — An online forum published in Cuban state media this week offers
the most intriguing sign to date that communist authorities may be
preparing to make significant changes to the one-party system Fidel and
Raul Castro have controlled for 55 years.

A new "General Election Law" approved by the ruling Communist Party was
announced in state media last month, with few details given.

But in a Web forum on the site of Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth), one of
the two main state-run daily newspapers, Cubans this week got a glimpse
of what the changes might entail, with readers asking openly for direct
election of the country's top leaders and the ability to remove them
through a recall vote.

To be clear, the readers' questions do not amount to a formal
announcement, and the responses to them by Cuban election officials
revealed little.

Yet the mere publication of such proposals in Cuba's tightly-controlled
state media is remarkable, and not likely a coincidence. Questions and
comments from readers on Cuban government sites are carefully filtered,
if not planted by editors and party loyalists.

There were several queries like this: "I'd like to know if the
possibility of a direct vote for the top leadership positions in the
country is under consideration," asked reader "GCR," who added that "the
current system is (in my view) highly unpopular."

President Raúl Castro has set the next Communist Party Congress for
April 2016, and the events are typically the occasion for reform
announcements. With Castro, 83, saying he'll step down in 2018, next
year's meeting would, in theory, set the stage for the formal transition
to a post-Castro era.

Next in line to succeed Castro is Cuba's first vice president, Miguel
Diaz-Canel, 54.

Under the existing, complicated electoral system, Cubans vote among
pre-screened parliamentary delegates who in turn elect the government's
top executives, with a Castro always at the helm. There are no political
parties, no public debates and no dissenting views. No other political
model in the hemisphere is so rigid.

And with U.S.-Cuba tensions easing, Raúl Castro may see a narrow window
to make major changes while he and his brother Fidel, 88, are still alive.

Some of the reader questions in the forum seem unprecedented in state
media. One reader wanted to know about mechanisms to remove the
president or vice president through a recall vote "even before their
term is complete." Another commentator, listed as Carlos Gutierrez,
asked for direct elections and for Cuba's parliamentary sessions to be
broadcast live on radio and television.

It is possible that such queries reflect nothing more than a decision by
Juventud Rebelde's editors to opt for less censorship and more open
engagement. But that's unlikely in a country where so little is left to
chance.

Raúl Castro has repeatedly insisted that the changes to Cuba's system
he's implemented are in response to pressure from below, and this type
of Web forum may be a way to create a perception of democratic
give-and-take.

After a near-fatal illness forced his older brother aside in 2006, Raúl
Castro organized public debates in Cuban neighborhoods about the
country's economic model, then presented the reforms that followed --
"updates" is the official term -- as an expression of popular will.

With the Cuban parliament preparing to return to the long-abandoned
halls of the Havana Capitolio as soon as this year, there have also been
rumors that the 600-or-so-member body will be downsized and its seats
earned through more competitive elections.

Raúl Castro has already proposed term limits for top leadership
positions in the government, which his brother ran for 47 years.

Such changes, and even a few of the ones floated in the Web forum this
week, would not make Cuba a multi-party liberal democracy overnight. But
they would, without a doubt, represent the most important overhaul to
Cuba's ironclad political system in decades.

Nick Miroff is a Latin America correspondent for The Post, roaming from
the U.S.-Mexico borderlands to South America's southern cone. He has
been a staff writer since 2006.

Source: Is Cuba on the verge of major political reform? - The Washington
Post -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/03/05/is-cuba-on-the-verge-of-major-political-reform/