Cuba's party congress: The road to reform?

[naaman fletcher]

The sixth congress of the PCC, Cuba's only legal political party for the last five decades, will draw 1,000 delegates from around the nation, who will also select new members of the party's central committee, which will in turn choose the party's first and second secretaries.

The party congress was postponed in 2002 due to economic problems, and continued to be delayed after former President Fidel Castro fell ill in 2006, according to official sources.

The April 16-19 gathering will be the first PCC congress to be held in 14 years. The party congress, the PCC's top-level meeting, normally takes place behind closed doors.

Fidel Castro stepped down from the presidency when he fell ill in 2006. But he never officially resigned as first secretary of the PCC.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/04/2011415115956558182.html

[joshcryer]

1. Let's hope so. I wonder if on Carter's last visit he reiterated his support for Democracy in Cuba.

He met with several of the Cuban bloggers (Yoani met him and presented him with Cuban grown peanuts, you didn't see that posted on this forum, of course). When he visited in 2002 he was supportive of the Varela Project in the speech he gave in Havana (which later led to 75 "dissidents" being imprisoned, and some now exiled after nearly a decade of persecution).