Cuba's National Assembly convenes to choose successor to Castro

BY FRANCES ROBLES
Ofelia Ortega Suárez is an evangelical church pastor from Matanzas. Juan Antonio Borrego Díaz is a young blogger and Sancti Spiritus newspaper editor, while Antonio Castañeda is a musician and Santeria priest from Havana.

The three are among the nearly 400 new faces in Cuba's National Assembly whose 614 members Sunday will choose Fidel Castro's successor as president. A full 72 percent are too young to have any recollection of capitalism. Only a third are incumbents.

This younger and more diverse National Assembly is likely, experts say, to elect Castro's brother and Cuba's Defense Minister Raúl Castro as president, clearing the way for the kinds of reforms Raúl has promised during his 19-month tenure as interim leader to address the island's myriad economic problems.

''For the next five years, they are the ones who are going to deal with changes and reforms,'' said Domingo Amuchástegui, a former member of the Cuban intelligence services who now lives in Miami. ``I think it's important to have that younger generation and people from different sectors. They bring to the National Assembly a different sense of what is needed to be done.

``They are closer to real life.''

Many Cuba observers dismiss the assembly, formed in 1976, as a rubber-stamp mockery of a legislature. Its members run unopposed, they meet only twice a year for a handful of days and they vote by consensus. No bill has ever been voted down.

Although there have been legislative shakeups before, most agree that the sweeping transformation last month of its composition represents a significant step toward inclusion, and shows that the Cuban government under Raúl is more willing to embrace change. And if Raúl, as many predict, really opens the communist system to more economic reforms and public debate, the assembly could gain a stronger voice.

About half of those elected in January had been nominated by government-controlled organizations such as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the Federation of Cuban Women and Cuba's lone labor union.

The other half were elected to the assembly in municipal votes, via a complicated process that began late last year with block-by-block nominations by show of hands.

The result: 42 percent are women and 39 percent are black or racially mixed, the government says. Sixty percent were born after the revolution, and another 12 percent were 10 or younger when Castro won power in 1959.

FRUSTRATED POPULACE

Their work has never been more important. The government faces a population frustrated over low wages and rising food prices. Many products can only be bought with Cuba's dual currency, the convertible peso that is out of reach for most.

Fidel Castro warned in a 2005 speech that the revolution could implode if the hearts and minds of young people are lost because of economic hardship.

''If you are from Las Tunas, a woman, who is black and young and raising children, you are going to be more in touch with the issues than the old guard,'' said Katrin Hansing, visiting associate director of Florida International University's Cuban Research Institute. ``That woman is more in touch precisely because she lives in the provinces, because she's young and because she's black.''

Although Raúl Castro is believed to have younger reform-minded supporters, such as Vice President Carlos Lage, hardline loyalists such as Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque remain in positions of power.

Peter Roman, author of People's Power: Cuba's Experience with Representative Government, says the key aspect of the new assembly is ''the representation of the municipalities,'' he said. ``That's the dynamic part.''

Roman, whose book praises the Cuban electoral process as street-level democracy, said it's true the assembly has never rejected a bill in its 20-year history, but that's because bills pass through a heated committee process. Amuchástegui, the former intelligence agent, also contends the legislature is no rubber stamp.

The University of Miami's Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the Institute of Cuban and Cuban American Studies, said most laws are presented to the assembly for ratification from the highest levels of government.

''How much will they have in terms of power? None,'' Gomez said. ``But symbolically, having younger people in there is a message.''

The assembly's composition has never mattered before. While it has elected a new Council of State and a Council President -- in effect the country's president -- every five years, this is the first time that Fidel Castro will not be the surefire winner.

Castro, 81, who held the title of prime minister during his first 17 years in power, assumed the title of council president when the National Assembly was created. Raúl Castro, 76, has been at the helm since July 2006 when his brother fell victim to the unnamed illness that would lead him only last week to step down permanently.

And so the assembly -- whose members include Elián González's father Juan Miguel González and Magalí Llort, the mother of convicted Cuban spy Fernando González -- will gather at the Convention Palace in Havana at 10 a.m. Sunday to replace the man who has ruled Cuba for almost five decades.

A special nominating commission has spent the past month consulting all the members on their preferred nominees for leadership posts in the assembly and the Council of State.

''I have never witnessed anything like that before,'' Amuchástegui said.

Among those questioned were Matanzas representative Ortega, the first evangelical Presbyterian minister to serve in the legislature in a country that was officially atheist for 30 years. Castañeda is the assembly's first Santeria high priest.

But true democracy appears to remain a long way off. The leadership nominating committee reached its decision behind closed doors, and the assembly members are not expected to question the slates it will submit. Hansing also noted that the new members are no doubt government loyalists.

''These people have been supporters of the system forever,'' she said. ``They didn't just appear out of nowhere.''

ALLIES OF RAUL

Dissident journalist Guillermo Fariñas said he was struck by the number of assembly members who are viewed as closer to Raúl Castro than to his brother, among them Llort.

''What you see is series of generals and colonels and people very close to Raúl Castro,'' he said by telephone from Villa Clara.

A review of the biographies posted on a government website shows 19 of the military's high command are in the assembly, including its chief of intelligence.

''The only change you'll see Sunday is in the Council of State,'' Fariñas said. ``But who knows. There could be surprises.''