We have it on the good authority of Brazil’s leftist president that Cuban leader Fidel Castro is healthy enough to return to politics. A day after Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made that revelation, following a two-hour meeting with Castro, the grand old man himself spoke. Er… make that wrote.
In an essay published by Cuban state media Wednesday, the 81-year-old ailing leader said he is not yet healthy enough to speak to Cuba’s masses in person. Therefore, he can’t campaign for Sunday’s parliamentary elections.
There is a nagging question here. Why the discrepancy? Although a Castro confidant, da Silva is nowhere near his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez when it come to breathing the kind of fire the Cuban leader is known for. Does this explain the urgency on the part of Castro to contradict da Silva.
Admittedly, there may be a benign explanation here. Castro’s essay was probably in the final stages of publication when the Brazilian president spoke. Moreover, da Silva probably implied a future far beyond the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Castro, moreover, may have sounded lucid and fit in a one-on-one setting. The Brazilian visitor was in no position to speak on extrapolating Castro’s abilities to a public setting.
Castro has not been seen in public for a year and a half. Emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006 forced him to cede power to a government headed by his younger brother Raul. Ordinarily, this should have been a perfect time for Castro to retire. Raul, five years his junior, wouldn’t have raised too many eyebrows by officially succeeding his brother.
Evidently, the succession doesn’t seem to have been completed. Has it even started? Why? Do other influential elements in Cuba’s communist hierarchy view Raul as an unworthy successor? Is there a power struggle going on which Castro feels he has to camouflage by his incessant allusions to returning to work?
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