LOS ANGELES: Nine months after falling victim to an illness that many US analysts assumed would prove fatal, Fidel Castro appears to have come back from death’s door to resume some leadership responsibilities and rein in Cuba’s would-be reformers.

He’s receiving visiting dignitaries, not just friends such as Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez but official delegations, including one last week led by a senior figure in the Chinese Communist Party, Wu Guanzheng.Castro’s name is again attached to editorials for Cuba’s state-run media, ones in which the US government is lambasted for freeing an accused terrorist and Brazil is criticised for using food crops for ethanol production when they could be feeding Latin America’s poor.

And, to the alarm of veteran Cuba-watchers who sensed a new degree of openness to economic change during Castro’s absence, the apparently reinvigorated revolutionary is now believed to be blocking moves to let Cubans open small businesses.

US analysts of Cuban developments acknowledge that they know little about Castro’s illness or the degree of his recuperation. His personal secretary said he was suffering from intestinal bleeding when he handed over power last summer to his brother Raul. US intelligence sources have speculated that he has cancer.

But the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported the most detailed and plausible version of his prolonged medical attention, citing unidentified doctors familiar with Castro’s case. The newspaper said the Cuban president had undergone three surgeries to remove infected intestinal tissue and became gravely ill when the incisions failed to heal and the infection spread to his stomach.

Since July 31, when Raul Castro, the defence minister and first vice president, took over for his older brother, state-authorised media exposes on rampant corruption and the younger Castro’s public criticism of shortages in food, transportation and housing have hinted at internal review of Cuba’s political and economic system, said Phil Peters, vice president of the Lexington Institute near Washington and a veteran analyst of Cuban affairs.

Raul, the pragmatist: Raul Castro has a reputation for pragmatism about private enterprise within the state-run economy, having inaugurated many of the island’s most successful hard currency-earning joint ventures in tourism in the early 1990s, when the country was reeling from the sudden cut-off of Soviet aid.

After Fidel Castro was too sick even to make an appearance at the September summit in Havana of the Non-Aligned Movement or at his delayed 80th birthday celebrations in December, the government said that a thorough review was underway to identify, and presumably correct, flaws in the communist ideology guiding the country.

“Now it looks like cold water’s getting poured over all that,” Peters said. “That, to me, is the clearest sign that Fidel Castro is getting better and getting closer to coming back to office.”

Castro remains staunchly critical of income disparities among Cubans, including the estimated $1 billion in annual remittances from relatives abroad that are believed to benefit as much as a third of the island’s population.

State salaries average about $15 a month for most workers, so the $100 a month that Cubans in the United States can legally send their relatives in Cuba has created a class divide between those who receive dollars and those who do not.

Also prospering out of proportion to those in state enterprises are the thousands of entrepreneurs who secured licenses during the early 1990s that allowed them to open private restaurants, pensions and consumer services that cater to the two million foreign visitors to Cuba each year.

Castro revoked many of those private-enterprise licenses three years ago and imposed withering taxes, just before he ordered the removal of the US dollar from circulation in Cuba and replaced it with a new national currency called the convertible peso, which has no value outside Cuba.

Hopes of an expansion in self-employment were buoyed last fall when Raul Castro began speaking out in interviews and speeches against the government’s inability to properly provide for its 11.2 million citizens.

Those hopes were dashed, at least for the short term, this month when Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage, architect of the early 1990s reforms, parroted Fidel Castro’s condemnation of “social distortions” in a speech to a Communist youth group. Cuban media also reported recently that the academic commission assigned to examine problems with state ownership wouldn’t deliver its verdict for three years.

Peters believes the debate opened late last year will continue “airing out all kinds of dirty laundry” and putting pressure on the leadership to make course corrections.

“Carlos Lage also said, ‘We, the Cuban government, no longer pay a just wage that allows people to cover their basic needs,’ “Peters said. “You can only say that so many times before you have to come up with a solution to the problems.”

Damian J. Fernandez, head of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University in Miami, agrees that a Pandora’s box of ideological debate has been opened that will eventually lead to change.

“People are talking in Cuba. When the talk is going to materialise into action, I don’t know. But this moment of succession, the transfer of power, has broadened the parameters of what is discussable, what is permissible,” he said. “There are still parameters, but the borderlines are fuzzier.”

Cubans remain patient: Still, Castro’s return to the power structure would put a damper on the debate, he said.

“To have an open, full-fledged discussion on the future, Castro would have to be gone,” Fernandez said.

Other analysts say the seesawing on reform could threaten Cuba’s relative social peace. Although Cubans privately express a hunger for more opportunity to improve their living standards, they have remained patient throughout Castro’s rigid opposition to capitalist activity, including the types of business now allowed in allied Vietnam and China.

“He’s in the way,” Frank Mora, a professor of national security strategy at the National War College, said of Castro’s apparent return to the policymaking arena. “He’s prolonging a real transition. Whatever support Raul has been able to build can run out quickly if he’s not able to deliver the goods.”

However, he said, Cubans have shown little inclination to challenge their system in the way Eastern Europeans did two decades ago with pro-democracy marches and protests. There also is no discernible divide in the Cuban political or military elite, Mora said, that could be exploited by pro-democracy advocates, who are few and fearful since a major crackdown on dissent four years ago.

Although Cuba-watchers differ in their forecasts of whether Fidel Castro will resume full power, they agree he is making at least a partial leadership comeback. By Communist protocol, the head of the Cuban party should have received the Wu delegation — a role Castro signed over to his brother nine months ago.

“At least the PR campaign is that he is trying to get back in the saddle,” Fernandez said. “Can he mount the horse as totally as in the past? I think that’s unlikely. But he can still have a lot of influence.”What is the elder Castro’s motivation for reasserting control despite advancing age, persistent infirmities and his own stated need to groom a new generation of leaders?

“Once a micromanager, always a micromanager,” Fernandez said.—Dawn/The Los Angeles Times News Service

In the past sixteen months of the KESC’s status as a privatized entity, its Chief Executive Officer has been replaced; its Chief Operating Officer has been transferred; its initial contracts for setting up a power station and two grid stations which were the responsibility of its Operations and Management partner, Siemens, have been hastily re-assigned to different companies; its losses (as per the Annual Report-June 06) have shown an increase of 115 per cent and its inept service has brought out rioters in droves on countless occasions.

If all its clients were to give a performance review of the utility’s performance at this juncture, it would be declared a failed entity.

Taking stock of the company’s operations in the past twelve months, it is evident that the KESC still has not come to grips with its supply and demand ratio. When the corporation changed hands and became a private entity for a sum of Rs20billion, its new CEO at the time, Mr Frank Scherschmidt, brought in especially to revamp the malfunctioning organization, had a deadline of two years in which to turn the organization into a profitable venture. As a short term goal he had promised a visible change within three months.

Initial plans that were disclosed included restructuring of employee pay scales to eliminate any need for corruption and a reorganised tariff rate system in which provisions were to be made for large scale consumers and small time consumers, with different tariff ‘packages’ for retired citizens, family units and single persons. Most importantly, large-scale investments were expected for a general overhaul of the network which included converting the entire distribution network to a specialized computer system (Solution Application and Product data processing or SAP) enabling the head-office to monitor power failures even before a consumer lodged a complaint.

But even after allowing the first five months for ‘settling in’, in the subsequent twelve months none of the promised reforms have taken place. In fact, the corporations has shown a record failure in performance level and in terms of financial losses incurred to date. WAPDA is presently providing 715MW of power which is as much as can be expected from it. There is a current deficit of 200MW which the KESC hopes will end once all units at Bin Qasim become operational. However, in the coming months when summer peaks, even if all sources supply according to maximum estimates it is more than likely (as experience shows) that breakdowns in units and grid stations will create a shortage in supply, with load-shedding as the inevitable consequence.

And in the mean time the current gap of 200 MW (which might even rise with an increase in demand) is consistently ruining businesses of large and small traders and plaguing people’s lives since last April. The much touted power plant which should have been halfway to completion by now and which would have generated 400 MW in 2007 and 500 MW for the year 2008 – resulting in much-needed relief from load-shedding -- is a project that was declared a bad business proposition at the last minute and vetoed by the KESC Board of Directors. Reports in the press had laid the blame on Siemens which, it was said, had attempted to purchase a second-hand power plant at the price of a new plant.

During the previous winter months when substantial preparations should have been done on an emergency footing to ensure a better supply for the summer, the KESC was still ‘looking into’ arranging sources of power. Even the schedule of repairing the Bin Qasim units was inefficient and a delayed procedure has resulted in one of its six units still under repair and unusable, which is resulting in the shortfall of 200MW of electricity.

While the KESC struggles with the continuing power crisis, its Operations and Management partner is emerging as an insensitive party, unmindful of all complaints being highlighted in the media. The chairman of Siemens, Sohail Wajahat, has gone on record denying documented evidence of every kind, including the financial reports issued by the KESC in June 2006. Talking to the CNBC in an interview, he stated that all allegations were untrue, even the contract terms according to which the KESC – if it prematurely ended the contract on charges of inefficiency -- would have to pay the contracting partner 65 per cent of the charges remaining from the payment of US$ 8 million per year till 2011.

And the Rs14.45 billion losses declared in its annual report as compared to the Rs6.5 billion losses reported the previous year were referred to by Mr Wajahat as a, “decrease in losses”!

Newspaper reports, particularly of agitation by distressed citizens against electricity, should not be brushed aside as false reports. These are the people’s sufferings which are being highlighted so that concrete steps may be taken to alleviate their misery.

Granted, a company steeped in years of corruption, disrepair and with insufficient financial power is not an easy ship to turn around. But if the changed management had been allowed to carry out its reformation agenda according to the schedule and ideas defined by its first chief executive, a lot would have been accomplished. Instead, the CEO’s powers were drastically curtailed at the outset and the management allowed to run amok.

All eyes are now on the newly appointed CEO, S. M. Amjad. Hopefully, the contracts now given to General Electric for putting up two power stations and the 14 grid stations to be put up by ABB (after revoking the same contracts earlier given to Siemens) will secure better results for next summer. As for the current season, it is hoped that at least the contractual partners will harness their energies a bit more efficiently to deal with the smooth running of the infrastructure currently in use.