Vol. 73/No. 12      March 30, 2009

The action of the Council of State also merged the Ministry of Foreign Trade and the Ministry of Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation into a single Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment. The new department’s responsibilities include overseeing the country’s foreign trade as well as joint ventures with foreign enterprises in Cuba.

The Ministry of the Fishing Industry was combined with the Ministry of the Food Industry. Both ministries are centrally involved in food production, a national priority.

According to the statement by the Council of State the March 2 measures were in line with proposals made by the president at the Seventh Legislature of the National Assembly of People's Power, the Cuban legislature, held on Feb. 24, 2008.

"A more compact and operational structure is required, with a smaller number of institutions under the central state administration and a better distribution of their functions," President Raúl Castro said in a report to that body.

Among the changes announced March 2 were the removal of Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque and the secretary of the Council of Ministers, Carlos Lage Dávila. They were replaced, respectively, by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, former first deputy minister, and Brig. Gen. José Amado Ricardo Guerra, head of the Secretariat of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba.

Commentary in the world capitalist press “speculated” that the changes were evidence of a factional struggle between supporters of former president Fidel Castro and President Raúl Castro.

In his "Reflections" column in the March 3 Granma Fidel Castro refuted those rumors.

Castro said he was consulted and agreed with the replacement of Pérez Roque and Lage. Their release had nothing to do with "a lack of personal courage,” he wrote. “The sweet nectar of power, for which they had made no sacrifice, awoke in them ambitions that led them to play a disgraceful role. The external enemy was filled with illusions about them.”

Castro also noted that he had not proposed the original assignments of most of those who were replaced. “I never devoted myself to that task,” he wrote.

Both Pérez Roque and Lage subsequently submitted letters addressed to Raúl Castro, president of the Council of State and Council of Ministers, expressing their agreement with the action taken to replace them and resigning from all of the government and party responsibilities they had held.

The Council of State’s March 2 statement on the reorganization concluded by noting that further changes should be expected. “It is necessary," it said, "to continue studying the government’s current structure with the objective of gradually reducing its magnitude and increasing its effectiveness.”
 
 
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