•  havana
• Friday, April 15, 2011
• Inter Press Service

Cuba's governing Communist Party (PCC) will meet over the weekend to decide on the direction and scope of far-reaching reforms aimed at modernising the country's socialist economy over the next few years.

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 Apr. 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.

Castro stepped down from the presidency when he fell ill in 2006. But he never officially resigned as first secretary of the PCC. However, he clarified on Mar. 22, in one of his regular columns, that when he got sick he 'resigned without hesitation all of (my) state and political positions, even that of first secretary of the party.'

It is widely assumed that Fidel's 79-year-old younger brother Raúl, who took over as acting president in July 2006 and officially succeeded his brother in February 2008, will be elected first secretary in this weekend's congress, at least until the next congress, which would normally be held in five years time.

In 2007, Raúl Castro, who is now officially second secretary, said he would introduce 'structural and conceptual' reforms needed to bolster the economy. The president sees the 'economic battle' as 'the principal task and the key ideological work' of the PCC and the Young Communist League (UJC), 'because on this depends the sustainability and preservation' of Cuba's socialist system.

The discussions in the sixth congress will focus on a 32-page document called the Draft Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy, which was previously submitted to popular debates in which more than seven million of Cuba's 11.2 million people reportedly took part.

Suggestions expressed by ordinary Cubans in the nationwide neighbourhood or workplace meetings led, according to official sources, to the modification of more than two-thirds of the 291 paragraphs in the draft guidelines.

The draft document, 'enriched' by the popular debates, will serve as the basis for designing the party's strategy and creating mechanisms and instruments to achieve the desired economic and social model, economist Armando Nova wrote in an article to which IPS had access.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service