CUBA:Fidel's successor looks ready to allow citizens greater personal freedom, writes John Moranin Havana
SHORTLY AFTER 4.30 yesterday morning the last singer on the Malecon went home. It wasn't the fat lady, though, and the revolution seems safe for the moment as, shortly afterwards buses, lorries and cars began ferrying hundreds of thousands of Cubans to May Day celebrations in the city's Plaza de la Revolución.
On their way they passed huge pictures of six Cubans jailed in Miami after infiltrating US-backed groups there. Behind these pictures is a forest of black flags with white stars which prevents the US Interests Section building using tickertape messages to taunt Cubans.
At the Plaza de la Revolución, for three hours up to 500,000 Cubans waved flags, sang, chanted, and cheered "Viva Fidel and Raul" as they paraded past a review stand containing the communist country's leaders, except Fidel Castro, who failed to turn up for the second year running.
He hasn't been seen in public for 26 months and the political reins are now firmly in the hands of his younger brother Raul.
Raul did not make a speech at the parade, which is a cheerful event with children singing and bands playing. Yet Raul's presence there as leader for the first time should reinforce his position with the public, as he begins to make changes that Fidel would probably not have contemplated. On Tuesday Raul announced that next year Cuba would hold its first Communist Party congress in more than a decade where it is thought the plans to the transfer of power to the newer generation will be discussed. He said the Communist Party must establish guidelines, including those for "when the historic generations are no longer around".
In recent weeks Raul has eased a number of restrictions on Cubans and announced a series of economic moves some of which inject a modest amount of private enterprise into the previously rigid communist economic model.
The changes include the lifting of the prohibition on Cubans owning mobile phones and computers, extra pay for better workers, ownership rights to housing and the introduction of a measure of private enterprise in farming. Cubans will also be able to travel abroad more freely.
The difficulty for Cubans is that most will be unable to enjoy these new measures.
As for Fidel and his health, in a recent signed article in the state-run Granma newspaper, he may have given a hint. He wrote, "The nature and psychology of human beings should be analysed: their time for action is very brief, it is just a fraction of a second in the history of the human species. To understand this is a great remedy against all vanities." As he probably watched the May Day event on television, Fidel's mind may have flashed back almost 50 years, to the time when he and his Barbudos - bearded ones - triumphantly arrived in Havana to take the capital from the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, and waved to the crowd from an open vehicle.