Now that Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro is dead, one of his most prominent critics says he sees big economic and political changes to the one-party Communist system, perhaps within four years.
Jose Daniel Ferrer, who leads the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), the country’s largest dissident group, says he does not expect Communist rule to crumble quickly but that change will surely come.
“We will have more repression in the short term,” Ferrer told Reuters, predicting President Raul Castro would tighten government control in order to stave off demands for political reform after his elder brother Fidel’s death on Nov. 25.
He was speaking at his hilltop headquarters in the southeastern city of Santiago de Cuba shortly before Castro’s ashes arrived there to be interred on Sunday, reports Reuters.
Santiago is the cradle of the revolution that brought the Castros to power in 1959 and it remains largely loyal because they brought health and education to a population with a large concentration of Afro-Cubans that had previously suffered discrimination.
It is, however, also home to UNPACU.
Ferrer’s two-storey home in the Altamira district of Santiago was bustling with activity in the past few days with UNPACU members downloading foreign news broadcasts and checking on the whereabouts of colleagues reported to have been detained ahead of Castro’s funeral.
Fidel Castro led Cuba for almost half a century before falling ill in 2006 and handing power to his brother Raul.
Since then, the younger Castro has introduced market-style reforms allowing private businesses and agreed a detente with the United States, fueling a tourism boom.
But low wages, rising prices and limited opportunities in an economy still dominated by the state have made many Cubans hungry for faster reforms.
Raul Castro has allowed Cubans a little more Internet access and he released dozens of political prisoners under deals with the United States and the Roman Catholic Church, but otherwise has done little to ease the Communist Party’s grip on power.
Castro, who is 85 and due to retire in 2018, led tens of thousands in making a pledge on Saturday night in Santiago to defend the socialist system he built with his brother.
