Cuba's President Raul Castro shuffles government

[Gambitt]

HAVANA (Reuters) - Some of Cuba's leading politicians lost their jobs on Monday in a high-level reshuffling of the government that President Raul Castro said would make it more efficient.

Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and Carlos Lage, a vice president who many considered an economic reformer, were among the biggest names to lose posts.

Raul Castro, who was elected president on Feb. 24, 2008, to succeed older brother Fidel Castro, had said for months that he would restructure the government to make it leaner and more responsive.

He ousted Lage from his post as executive secretary of the Council of Ministers, but it was not clear if Lage would stay on as one of the vice presidents of the Council of State.

I wonder what this is about?  Perez Roque and Lage have been the "faces" of the Cuban Ministry for years.  I even read some news speculation that at one time Perez Roque was next-in-line after Raul for the Presidency?

Maybe Raul was getting a bit nervous and decided to "Centralize Power" as Stalin used to do.

[Jammyisme]

oh my .   That's not very good is it.

[Gambitt]

Now isn't this interesting:   It's from Today's Associate Press Wire

Power shakeup casts more doubt on post-Castro Cuba

By WILL WEISSERT – 13 hours ago

HAVANA (AP) — The ouster of Cuba's two most prominent younger leaders leaves more doubt than ever about who will guide the country once the Castro brothers and their gray-haired revolutionary contemporaries are gone.

President Raul Castro is 77. His hand-picked No. 2, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, is a year his senior. And there are no obvious next-generation successors in the ranks of mostly obscure communist party officials, military officers and bureaucrats who were suddenly promoted this week in Cuba's largest leadership shake-up in decades.

"This is the old guard, most of them are very traditional hard-liners," said Uva de Aragon, associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University in Miami. "It's disappointing in a sense that it doesn't give a lot of room to think about a generational transition."

A number of potential heirs-apparent have risen to Cuba's top ranks in the 50 years since Fidel and Raul Castro took power as youthful rebels, only to be cast aside, die or grow too old to be more than a stop-gap leader. The two most recent possibilities were 43-year-old Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and 57-year-old Vice President Carlos Lage, both now demoted in this week's Cabinet reshuffle.

Fidel Castro hinted in an essay published Tuesday that Perez Roque and Lage failed to do enough to quiet whispers that they could emerge on top in a post-Castro Cuba.

"The central sin at play here is to have ambition," said Ann Louise Bardach, author of the book "Cuba Confidential." She said this leadership shake-up is the biggest since Fidel Castro unleashed a mass purge of Cuban leaders in the mid-1960s, citing nebulous charges of corruption.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ha2f_SYHHd5bA8SI5LgWG4-Z3wqQD96NF9580

I'ts almost exactly what I suggested on Monday!

[Jammyisme]

Look at the blog from Yoani today.She comments on this. Very interesting perspective.