“SEEING IS believing,” said Diana, as she stared at the television set in her Havana living room. There was the commandante, who turns 84 on August 13th, back from the dead in his olive-green military fatigues as he spoke from a podium to the national assembly.
Fidel Castro’s appearance on Saturday before parliamentary deputies, the diplomatic corps and foreign journalists marked the first time Cubans had been offered a glimpse of the bearded, iconic figure since he underwent surgery in July 2006 and then suffered complications.
His speech lasted 11 minutes, not hours, and Mr Castro walked slowly, bent over and with the help of aides.
He used the publicity to deliver a message that was hardly reassuring to those, like Diana, who consider him a prophet.
The most recent UN sanctions on Iran would trigger a nuclear holocaust if the US inspected the country’s ships come September, as called for in a June resolution, he warned.
Only world pressure on US president Barack Obama could avert the conflagration that would bring all leading economies to a standstill.
The leader of Cuba’s revolution emerged in July from four years of seclusion, preaching his apocalyptic views to small gatherings of Cuban economists, diplomats, war veterans, intellectuals and artists, his recorded activities repeatedly broadcast by state-run media.
Before July, Mr Castro occasionally met guests at his home, wrote essays mainly on international affairs and appeared only sporadically in photographs and video clips.
“Does anyone believe the powerful empire will back away from the sanctions’ demand that Iranian merchant vessels be inspected?” Mr Castro asked rhetorically on Saturday, as he defended his doomsday forecast that has raised eyebrows at home and abroad.
“Does anyone think the Iranians, a people with a culture of thousands of years and which is much more intertwined with death than ours, will lack the courage we have shown in resisting the demands of the United States?” he continued, predicting Iran would respond by sinking the US fleet and events would then spiral out of control.
“I doubt Fidel believes what he is saying. He is being dramatic, trying to stay relevant,” a European diplomat quipped.
“The question we all have is what this means in terms of Cuba’s domestic politics,” he added.
Indeed, ever since Mr Castro became ill and resigned the presidency in favour of his brother Raúl, there has been speculation over who is really calling the shots in Havana and whether the slow progress of Raúl Castro’s efforts to reform the state-dominated economy signals his brother’s opposition.
Mr Castro’s sudden reappearance and the leadership’s penchant for secrecy have added to the fog.
“Raúl’s legitimacy as president will now be increasingly in doubt even if Fidel remains fixated solely on these truly eccentric themes,” said Brian Latell, former Cuba analyst at the CIA. “What we are witnessing is unbridled narcissism,” he said.
But it has been 18 months since Fidel Castro strayed from international issues and uttered or wrote a word about Cuba’s domestic situation, an indication some believe the brothers are working together.
“It seems that Fidel is looking to cut the figure of statesman, but not head of state. Raúl set forth his domestic agenda at the national assembly a week ago and by all accounts is governing at every turn,” said Julia Sweig, senior fellow at the Washington-based council on foreign relations. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)