[For more analysis and discussion on the changes in Cuba, click HERE.]
By Marce Cameron
March 11, 2012 -- Green Left Weekly/Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Cuban President Raul Castro has urged the Caribbean nation's citizens to contribute to a free and frank debate on the future of Cuba’s socialist project.
For the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), the aim of this debate is twofold: to strive for consensus on a new Cuban model of socialist development and to empower Cuba’s working people to implement what has been decided.
In other words, to advance a socialist renewal process in the face of entrenched opposition from within the administrative apparatus.
It is first and foremost a debate about the economy. A draft policy document, the Economic and Social Policy Guidelines, was submitted to a national debate for three months before to its adoption by the Sixth PCC Congress in April last year.
The core principles and objectives of the draft were conserved, but the final version of the Guidelines was substantially modified on the basis of this public debate.