Cuba's aging leaders move to shore up revolution

Marc Frank

HAVANA, March 26 (Reuters) - Cuba's new President Raul Castro has begun discreetly lifting some of the many restrictions on daily life as he tries to meet popular demands for better living standards in the socialist state.

With Cuba's veteran leader Fidel Castro, 81, forced to retire due to illness and other historic revolutionary figures in their 70s and 80s, the realization that life must improve for socialism to survive has taken on a new urgency.

In the first month since he took over as president from his ailing brother, Raul Castro's government decided to allow Cubans to buy computers, DVD players and other appliances, including air-conditioners and toasters.

Cuba's first new leader in half a century has also launched a restructuring of agriculture to reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks and boost food production.

Frank Mora, a Cuba expert at the National War College in Washington, said meeting the food or nutritional needs and expectations of the population is number one on Raul's list of priorities.

"It's funny -- with Fidel this would never be a serious political issue and therefore not require reform. Under the Raulistas, it is a political imperative that it address this important material issue," he said.

Allowing private farmers and cooperatives more leeway to buy tools, seeds and fertilizer is a step toward curbing the state's stranglehold on farming, local specialists said.

On taking office on Feb. 24, Raul Castro pledged to start lifting "excessive regulations and prohibitions" within weeks in response to complaints and proposals made in national debates that he had encouraged on Cuba's social and economic woes.

The realization that greater efficiency in the state-run economy was necessary to help the one-party system survive appears to have been developing over several years.

In a speech to the National Assembly in 2005, with Fidel Castro sitting next to him, central bank president Francisco Soberon warned that if Cuba failed to improve living conditions, "we risk that these formidable figures (Fidel and Raul Castro) will become the only pillar on which our system rests."

DISCREET LEADERSHIP

Since Fidel Castro first handed over power provisionally to his younger brother in July 2006 due to intestinal surgery from which he never fully recovered, calm has descended on Cuba.

There are no more mass marches led by the revolutionary through Havana's streets that once turned city life upside down, or late night presidential addresses on television berating U.S. capitalism and praising the achievements of Cuba's 1959 revolution.

"Raul's style is completely different from Fidel's. He's discreet, methodical and more domestically oriented, but just as red," a local Communist Party militant said.

Even as he begins making modest reforms, the low profile Raul Castro hasn't announced them in the Communist Party newspaper Granma or on state television.

"These changes are already happening. Don't expect to see any announcements in Granma, that will never happen," one official said, asking like others interviewed that his name not be used.

Officials insist Raul Castro will strive to improve living conditions without adopting the market socialism of China, though some Cuba watchers believe he will have little choice in the long run.

Cuban-born economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a University of Pittsburgh professor, said Raul Castro's initial steps are in the right direction but fall short of tackling the problem of excessive state control of the economy, the major obstacle to increased production.

"Many Cuban economists believe that in agriculture, only market mechanisms and foreign investment will prove able to truly overcome stagnation," he said. (Editing by Michael Christie and Kieran Murray)