Left Flank

Are Asian Communist values coming to Cuba?

Ra�l Castro, who took over as Cuba's acting president in July 2006 when his elder brother, Fidel, had intestinal surgery, seems to be aware of the popular frustration. Acknowledging that the economy needed «structural and conceptual changes», in July he called for an «open debate» on what to do. Nothing should be off the agenda, he insisted.

The debate has taken place at local branches of the Communist Party, as well as trade unions and other mass organisations. At each meeting, a notetaker has recorded without attribution the criticisms and suggestions. Over the next two months the results will be analysed. Cuba-watchers reckon that, after a slow start, the debate has been franker and more wide-ranging than the last such exercise held in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the island's sponsor.

Apart from petty corruption and slovenly officials, the main gripes have been low pay, rising income inequality, inefficiency, waste and asphyxiating bureaucracy. Loyal Communist militants have joined ordinary people in criticising defects in the prized health and education systems, including Cuba's policy of sending some 25,000 doctors and other specialists to support Hugo Chavez's «Bolivarian Revolution» in Venezuela. (Mr Chavez pays Cuba some $3 billion-4 billion a year, partly in oil, for their services.)

How will Raul Castro respond to all this? Unlike Fidel, he is thought to favour the course pursued by China and Vietnam, in which markets and private investment have been combined with Communist political control. Even before the debate began, government economists had been studying measures such as allowing more self-employment and private or co-operative ownership of small and medium-sized businesses, as well as reforming land tenure and freeing agricultural markets.

Under Raul Castro the government has already been a bit more welcoming of foreign investment. He has also said that wages need to rise, though that will have to be accompanied by changes in prices and the official exchange rate.

It's not democracy, but many Cubans might prefer it. Will the US tolerate it?