WASHINGTON — The $410 billion spending bill working its way through Congress this week has become an unlikely platform for debate about United States policy toward Cuba. The bill, which will come up for a vote by the Senate this week, includes prov

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                           March 2, 2009

FOR MORE INFORMATION:                          CAMILA R. GALLARDO

                                                                               305-592-7768

PRESS STATEMENT

CANF STATEMENT IN REACTION TO ANNOUNCED

CABINET CHANGES IN RAUL CASTRO REGIME

After weeks of persistent calls for a revision of U.S. policy towards Cuba and just weeks before the Summit of the America's is to take place, the Cuban regime under Raul Castro has moved to deflate any hope of change by purging three of its highest profile civilian Cabinet Ministers, Carlos Lage, Jose Luis Rodriguez, and Felipe Perez Roque.   In light of these changes, the Cuban American National Foundation considers of importance to point out the following:

• These abrupt changes remind us of Stalin's purges, an effort to recentralize power under Raul Castro and to portray a unified front to the international community;

• The designation of various military figures, loyal to Raul Castro, to high level cabinet positions including Jose Amado Ricardo Guerra a Brigadier General, who now substitutes Carlos Lage as Secretary of the Council of Ministers, is demonstrative of the regime's desire to place additional control of the government in the hands of the Cuban military;

• The consolidation of several government ministries indicates a return to a centralizing structure that has proven to be at best inefficient and that promotes cronyism and corruption, instead of a way forward.

The surreptitious way in which the announcement was made, points toward a sense of urgency on the part of the regime.   Our experience leads us to believe that these changes were made perhaps in response to a perceived threat and that they will not be conducive to positive, democratic change, in fact, they represent an attempt on behalf of the regime to realign itself in order to perpetuate its hold on power.   Democratic change in Cuba will only be possible by empowering the Cuban people not by waiting for a dictatorship to reform.