Cuba's aging leaders move to shore up revolution

By Marc Frank

HAVANA, March 26 (Reuters) - Cuba's new President Raul Castro has begun
discretely lifting some of the many restrictions on daily life as he
tries to meet popular demands for better living standards in the
socialist state.
With Cuba's veteran leader Fidel Castro, 81, forced to retire due to
illness and other historic revolutionary figures in their 70s and 80s,
the realization that life must improve for socialism to survive has
taken on a new urgency.
In the first month since he took over as president from his ailing
brother, Raul Castro's government decided to allow Cubans to buy
computers, DVD players and other appliances, including air-conditioners
and toasters.
Cuba's first new leader in half a century has also launched a
restructuring of agriculture to reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks and
boost food production.
Frank Mora, a Cuba expert at the National War College in Washington,
said meeting the food or nutritional needs and expectations of the
population is number one on Raul's list of priorities.
"It's funny -- with Fidel this would never be a serious political issue
and therefore not require reform. Under the Raulistas, it is a political
imperative that it address this important material issue," he said.
Allowing private farmers and cooperatives more leeway to buy tools,
seeds and fertilizer is a step toward curbing the state's stranglehold
on farming, local specialists said.
On taking office on Feb. 24, Raul Castro pledged to start lifting
"excessive regulations and prohibitions" within weeks in response to
complaints and proposals made in national debates that he had encouraged
on Cuba's social and economic woes.
The realization that greater efficiency in the state-run economy was
necessary to help the one-party system survive appears to have been
developing over several years.
In a speech to the National Assembly in 2005, with Fidel Castro sitting
next to him, central bank president Francisco Soberon warned that if
Cuba failed to improve living conditions, "we risk that these formidable
figures (Fidel and Raul Castro) will become the only pillar on which our
system rests."
DISCRETE LEADERSHIP
Since Fidel Castro first handed over power provisionally to his younger
brother in July 2006 due to intestinal surgery from which he never fully
recovered, calm has descended on Cuba.
There are no more mass marches led by the revolutionary through Havana's
streets that once turned city life upside down, or late night
presidential addresses on television berating U.S. capitalism and
praising the achievements of Cuba's 1959 revolution.
"Raul's style is completely different from Fidel's. He's discrete,
methodical and more domestically oriented, but just as red," a local
Communist Party militant said.
Even as he begins making modest reforms, the low profile Raul Castro
hasn't announced them in the Communist Party newspaper Granma or on
state television.
"These changes are already happening. Don't expect to see any
announcements in Granma, that will never happen," one official said,
asking like others interviewed that his name not be used.
Officials insist Raul Castro will strive to improve living conditions
without adopting the market socialism of China, though some Cuba
watchers believe he will have little choice in the long run.
Cuban-born economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Pittsburg University
professor, said Raul Castro's initial steps are in the right direction
but fall short of tackling the problem of excessive state control of the
economy, the major obstacle to increased production.
"Many Cuban economists believe that in agriculture, only market
mechanisms and foreign investment will prove able to truly overcome
stagnation," he said. (Editing by Michael Christie and Kieran Murray)

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