Word: socialists
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...matter how vehemently he may deny it--and he does--the Cuban leader cannot escape the fact that after 36 years of wily international gamesmanship, he is stranded on the wrong side of history. The Soviet patrons who financed his ``socialist paradise'' for three decades have collapsed. The communist bedrock upon which he built his edifice of power has proved itself bankrupt on virtually every continent of the globe. As his own people clamor for a better life, Cuba's socialist dream appears to be fading fast...
Castro has been loath to respond by renouncing his socialist credo in the fashion of former communists like Boris Yeltsin. But to salvage what remains of his economy, he has been forced to adapt, imposing some measures that are anathema to his beliefs. In 1990, for example, Castro began soliciting foreign investment. Though he continues to declare that Cuba will never sell off its state-run companies, he has opened up strategic areas such as telecommunications, oil exploration and mining to joint ventures. The latest shocker: condominiums for sale to foreigners, with titillating hints that even land ownership may soon...
...painful and slow. Cuba leaves much to be desired in basic infrastructure, such as communications and power supply. Moreover, the government has yet to face up to its most difficult challenge: paring down inefficient state-run industries and the loaded bureaucracies that serve as the backbone of the socialist state. Laid-off employees have nowhere to go for work, and the government has so far allowed only 160,000 people (out of a total population of 11 million) to seek self- employment...
...Castro gets his country up and running again, he will use capitalist tools to survive. ``But,'' he insists, ``without renouncing our ideals!'' The way out is proving a difficult road for Castro's most loyal minions, since it requires discarding--temporarily, they assure themselves--several pillars of Cuba's socialist dogma. The old Central Planning Board, which piloted the state-directed economy, has been abolished. Last year the government claims to have cut the budget deficit 72% by slashing its bloated work force, eliminating dozens of subsidies and imposing price increases on such things as cigars, alcohol and electricity. These...
Earthquake Recriminations The Japanese government's torpid response to the Jan. 17 catastrophe in Kobe (5,090 dead, 29 still missing and about 300,000 homeless) has led to intense criticism of Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama--even from members of his own Socialist Party. Offers of assistance from 60 countries, the U.N. and the World Health Organization poured in, but some were subjectedto endless bureaucratic wrangling. Examples: foreign doctors were rebuffed at first because they did not have Japanese licenses; Swiss sniffer dogs were threatened with quarantine by the Agriculture Ministry. Conditions in the stricken port city, however, are improving...