Cuba: increasing openness

Elections will be held in Cuba on Sunday to elect some 15,000 delegates to municipal assemblies. They come as acting President Raul Castro makes tentative calls for greater openness in Cuban political life.

Yet as usual, only one party gets to field candidates in the elections, the first without the ailing Fidel Castro in charge. Citizens will choose from a total of around 37,000 candidates, making this a slightly more meaningful exercise than parliamentary polls, which are largely a rubber stamp for Communist Party candidates.  The country's Communist Party has urged young Cubans to stand in this year's elections to bring fresh blood to the country's political leadership.

Raul's moves towards collective, more accountable leadership, will continue.  This will lead to greater economic openness, and less overt repression of dissidents, but not to a wider political or economic opening, at least in the medium-term. In many ways political life on the island is on hold until the next US administration takes office in January 2009.