It is too early to tell whether the policy changes presented by Cuban leader Raul Castro over the weekend will bring positive change to the Caribbean island, but by simply suggesting that the term of a Cuban leader ought to be reduced to two five-year terms and that a tranche of the economy should be liberalized, Castro and the Cuban socialist leadership have once again thrown into very sharp relief the suicidal nature of North Korea’s anachronistic approach to political and economic life.
“No country or person can spend more than they have. Two plus two is four, never five, much less six or seven, as we have sometimes pretended,” Castro told the 6th Communist Party Congress, the country’s first such congress for fourteen years.
The Party’s failure to create new ideas and revitalize itself has become “an unbearable burden for the economy and a disincentive for work,” he went on.
As a result, the Cuban leader said that the country will place a limit of two five-year terms on all its top leadership positions, including his own, and reduce the state workforce, cut state subsidies, attempt to attract more foreign investment and allow domestic companies to operate with more autonomy.
In a message likely not missed in Pyongyang, the Chinese Communist Party, which maintains close ties with both Cuba and North Korea, promptly sent its congratulations, saying that the congress would “have a momentous and far-reaching impact on the sustained development of Cuba’s socialist cause.”
All of which is a far cry from recent goings-on in North Korea.
At the 3rd of its Workers’ Party Delegates’ Conferences in September, 2010, the Chosun Workers’ Party did precisely the opposite of what Cuba is apparently planning; where Cuba plans term limits, the North plans to transfer power to yet another open-ended dictatorship whose only claim to legitimacy is in the name of its leader, and where Cuba plans a measure of economic liberalization, the North is engaged in a constant battle to try and muzzle any kind of capitalist entrepreneurship.
Members of the North Korean leadership have been going to Cuba for many years. They generally meet, greet, shake hands and agree to strengthen bilateral ties in the name of socialist unity. But it appears that Cuba, as with China, Laos and Vietnam before it, has realized that the road North Korea is travelling cannot lead to success.
And while none of these countries seems interested in embracing real democracy, preferring instead to cling to the stability of one-party rule, they are all clearly aware that without some form of political dynamism and liberalization in the economic sphere, they are going nowhere.
