Raul Castro consolidates power in Cuba

By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Raul Castro has reorganized the Communist Party's leadership and consolidated his power as he pushes through reforms two months after succeeding his ailing brother Fidel Castro.

In a speech to the party's Central Committee published by Cuba's official media on Tuesday, the younger Castro announced a new seven-member executive committee would preside over the all-powerful Political Bureau.

He also called a party Congress in late 2009, the first in more than a decade, to discuss the future of socialism in Cuba.

Since he was installed as Cuba's first new leader in almost half a century in February, the 76-year-old Raul Castro has lifted a series of restrictions on daily life in Cuba, from owning cell phones and buying computers to entering tourist hotels.

He has also decentralized agriculture and given greater autonomy to private farmers, commuted the death sentences of common criminals and in early March signed two important United Nations human rights agreements long opposed by his brother.

All the changes are aimed at strengthening communist rule.

"The pragmatism of Raul Castro will continue to be the keynote of his approach, and reforms will continue to be introduced, and greater efficiency and productivity increasingly demanded," said John Kirk, a historian at Dalhousie University in Canada.

"This promises to be a period of significant change, designed to shore up the revolutionary process while using radically different strategies," Kirk said.

FIDEL CASTRO APPOINTMENTS ENDED

Raul Castro's announcement of a Political Bureau executive committee and its members was a first since the party's founding in 1975, though an informal one may have existed around Fidel Castro, who took power in a 1959 revolution.

The committee is made up of Raul Castro's most trusted confidants with an average age of more than 70 and decades of service to the Castro brothers.

Raul Castro will lead the committee and the six other members are the same men picked as the vice presidents of the Council of State, the government's top executive body, when he took over as president in February.

Cubans, many of whom remain loyal to Fidel Castro, have responded positively to the changes initiated by his brother, insisting they are simply a continuation and strengthening of the revolution.

Others see a marked change in leadership style since Raul Castro took over.

"The period of inventing solutions, of improvising is over," Havana handyman Jorge Hidalgo said.