Fidel Castro announced his retirement earlier this week after nearly 50 years as Cuba’s Communist dictator. Now 81, the world’s longest-serving head of state survived more than 600 CIA-backed assassination attempts, frustrated ten US presidents and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
His brother, Raul, 76, the defence minister, has been running the country since July 2006, and the National Assembly is expected to rubber-stamp him as the new president on Sunday.
For Cuba, the end of Castro’s rule comes “50 years too late”, says Anthony Daniels in the Daily Mail. He seized power in a country which was as wealthy as Italy, and has left it in ruins, with less than a tenth of Italy’s income per head. A full 70% of Cubans have known no other leader and no form of government apart from Castro’s “suffocating communist regime”, says The Globe and Mail, built on a “repressive police state” that tolerated no political dissent, no academic or press freedom and no independent trade unions.
Castro is well aware of the privations resulting from his refusal to allow market-based reform but is unrepentant, and the “autocracy he crafted” will not vanish overnight. Too many members of Cuba’s political and military elites have a “vested interest in propping up the regime“. But Raul is no Fidel: “he lacks the political acumen, the intellectual capacity and the charismatic appeal that enabled his brother to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Cubans”.
The US should seize this opportunity, says Robert Kagan in The Washington Post. In exchange for free and fair elections, the US could offer to ease the embargo. But there is no time to waste. Cuba’s new ruler must be “confronted publicly by a clear choice“. If he agrees, he will open the door to a new era of hope and prosperity. If he refuses, he alone will be responsible for what follows.