Fidel absent and Raúl silent at national celebrations
Crowd baffled as lesser luminaries take the lectern
Not since the heyday of Kremlinology has so much been read into the presence, or absence, of a communist leader.
Would Fidel Castro show up at today's Revolution Day celebrations in central Cuba? If so, what would it mean? And if he didn't, what would that mean?
The answer to the first question came when President Raúl Castro and other communist party leaders took their seats for the speeches in Santa Clara – but no Fidel.
Anticlimax turned to bafflement among the 90,000-strong crowd when Raul, who was expected to be the main speaker, stayed mute while lesser luminaries took the lectern, making it the first Revolution Day in living memory when neither Castro spoke.
Speakers on the podium blasted the US for a variety of sins in boilerplate rhetoric but said little to nothing about urgent issues such as economic reforms and political prisoner releases. 26 July is the most important date on Cuba's political calendar, which traditionally sets the agenda and signals policy directions.
There had been intense speculation the event would mark a "coming-out party" for Fidel almost exactly four years after he became ill and disappeared from public view. The 83-year-old former president had made six recent appearances before small gatherings and it was thought today's celebrations, televised live, would seal his return to the public sphere.
In addition, said analysts, it would have signalled the retired maximum commandante's continued influence and ability to delay would-be reforms by his younger brother and successor.
"If Fidel does come back that could suggest they aren't going to move as fast as they should with these changes," Wayne Smith, a former top US diplomat in Havana and senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, told AP.
State media carried a message from Fidel, marking the anniversary of his 1957 attack on the Moncada barracks which started the revolution, but did not explain his absence from the pomp.
Expectation he would attend was fuelled by a visit to a town outside Havana on Saturday when he wore an olive-green military shirt and was referred to as "commander in chief", a title shunned during his convalescence. As if to signal semi-retired status, however, he wore track-suit bottoms and did not comment on the island's economic crisis or the release of political prisoners.
The Guardian
