Raúl's chances of success slim

Carlos Alberto Montaner

Raúl Castro will fail as a leader. When he inherited the presidency of Cuba, he took on three tasks: to hold on to power; to substantially improve the living conditions of fellow Cubans; and to strengthen the nation's current institutionality, so as to ensure the future transfer of authority without any surprises, especially after he and Fidel are dead.

The three purposes were firmly intertwined, although the last is the truly important one. To retain power long-term, it was indispensable to alleviate the misery suffered by Cubans -- a phenomenon that, in due course, would augment the legitimacy of the Communist Party and facilitate the permanent renewal of the ruling class. Raúl knows that he and his brother are above the institutions and have enough capacity for intimidation to govern without any consensus, but that power is not transferable.

The reasons that conspire against Raúl's success are at least five:

• His brother's permanent veto over any measure that may lead to an opening. It just happened in Havana. A meeting was held to announce some minor measures that would facilitate travel abroad for Cubans, yet Fidel refused to grant them. He is a very cautious person, totally paranoid. He is convinced that any change endangers the regime's stability. Fidel is not unaware that the system is a disaster, but it is his disaster. It is his oeuvre, and he wants to preserve it. While he decides when to die, his final and saddest role on Earth will be to sabotage any sensible government measure that the country might need.

• Granma, the Communist Party daily, has just disclosed, with some surprise, that 19 percent of Cubans do not work, even when they're offered jobs. They have even explained why: They are paid very little and in an unusable currency. They have realized that it is better to starve to death without having to work than to starve to death while working. It's a perfectly rational attitude.

• Raúl understands the importance of material incentives to motivate people's desire to work, but he cannot satisfy those needs because the system is intrinsically unproductive. As long as there is no real competition, private property and institutions that encourage individual creativity (elements that inevitably lead to inequality), production will not increase to any significant level. If Raúl really wanted to understand why Cuba is a miserable country and how it could cease to be one, all he would have to do is to observe the reality in Korea. North Koreans endure a system like the one he and his brother advocate; South Koreans enjoy a free economy like the one he and his brother detest.

• For almost half a century, Raúl directed the Army with some ability, and his instinct will tell him to try to manage the country using the same methods. He will fail. An army is a vertical structure of total command, founded on blind obedience and the monotonous repetition of petrified ways of doing things. On the other hand, a modern, innovative and productive society is based on trial and error, on never-ending change, on the constant renewal of the ruling elites and on the spontaneous appearance of new forms of association. The armies are conceived to kill and die efficiently. The productive apparatus of a society and the public environment in which it is housed have a totally different function: to create wealth and generate the proper institutional space, so that individuals may pursue their own goals.

• A society cannot live with its back turned to its historic surroundings. Cuba cannot permanently be the anachronistic exception of a communist universe that crumbled three years after the Germans toppled the Berlin Wall. Young Cubans in the '60s lived through the (wrong) illusion that they were building the world of tomorrow. Young Cubans in the 21st century are living, horrified, through the nightmare of being the last representatives of the past, the ghostly survivors and guardians of a universe that sank due to to its incompetence and cruelty.

We still don't know when Cuba will begin its voyage toward normalcy -- political pluralism, democracy, freedoms, human rights, a rational economic model, cordial relations with its neighbors, a tranquil atmosphere. But no one should harbor the least doubt that this is the only direction in which the country can move. Raúl can ease the path, or he can obstruct it. What he cannot do is close it permanently.

March 31, 2008

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