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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez greets Fidel Castro in hospital on his 80th birthday. - AFP

Cuban President Fidel Castro, recovering from an illness, is expected to be back at work very soon.

THE people of Cuba were perhaps taken aback initially by the news of President Fidel Castro's illness and the temporary transfer of presidential powers to Raul Castro, but there was no disruption of normal life. Castro has been the helmsman of the Cuban revolution and the President since 1959. In fact, in many of his speeches in the last couple of years, he has hinted about the baton being passed on to the next generation. The younger cadre of the Communist Party of Cuba have been trained to shoulder greater responsibilities.

Raul Castro, the President's younger brother and the Defence Minister, who is presiding over the government temporarily, is one of the original leaders of the revolution, who fought along with Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara. A little known fact about Raul Castro is that he joined the Communist Party of Cuba before his brother.

Three weeks after the 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro had made it clear that Raul Castro was his designated successor. "I do it not because he is my brother - the whole world knows how much we hate nepotism - but because on my honour I consider him to have sufficient qualities to replace me tomorrow in case I die in this struggle." That the Cuban government was getting ready for any eventuality became evident when the official newspaper Granma, in its June 18 edition, ran a lengthy profile of Raul Castro, hailing his leadership qualities. Raul Castro played an important role in the July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada Barracks, a landmark event in the annals of the Cuban revolution. In recent years, he is known to have played a key role in motivating the youth to participate in a meaningful way in the affairs of the Communist Party. This year, university students were deployed in an anti-corruption campaign. Students fanned out all over the country to have a first-hand look at the working of big public sector companies. They succeeded in unearthing many cases of corruption involving senior officials.

In a speech made to senior Army officers on June 14, Raul Castro said: "Only the Communist Party can be the worthy heir of the trust Cubans have placed in their leader." The calmness with which the people reacted to Fidel Castro's sudden illness justifies the claim. The counter-revolutionary groups across the Florida Straits and their backers in Washington continue to claim that the stability of the country depended on the longevity of a single individual. "In Cuba calm reigns, but in the United States, and in particular Miami, a little extreme right wing group is aching," Granma reported recently.

According to Cuban sources, Castro is very much on the road to recovery. There are indications that he could be present at the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) summit to be held in Havana in September. The pictures of Castro in conversation with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on the occasion of his 80th birthday on August 13 also signal that he will be back at work very soon. Castro has said on many occasions that as a revolutionary he would like to die with his boots on. In his message to the Cuban people on his birthday, he told them to be "optimistic, but at the same time, always be prepared to receive bad news. To say the stability has improved considerably is not to tell a lie. To say that the period of recovery will be short and there is now no risk would be absolutely incorrect."

Vice-President Carlos Lage said in the second week of August that Castro would return to work in a few weeks' time. "Fidel is going to be around for another 80 years," said Lage. He also denied that the President has stomach cancer. Leaders from all over the world wished Fidel Castro quick recovery. President Evo Morales of Bolivia described Castro as an elder brother. Chavez went a step further. "He is like the Pope for all of us, the revolutionaries of this continent," Chavez said on his weekly television programme Allo Presidente.

However, the Bush administration and the right-wing Cuban exile population exulted openly over the news. Since assuming power, Castro has outlasted nine U.S. Presidents and survived countless attempts on his life engineered by Washington. In Miami, there was the ungainly sight of a motley crowd celebrating the hospitalisation of the Cuban leader. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an inflammatory speech on Radio Marti, the U.S.-financed propaganda network, virtually asking the people of Cuba to revolt. President George W. Bush, in a written statement, pompously said that he supported "democratic" change and a "transition" government and that he would "take note" of the people in "the current regime" who stood in the way. False news continues to be disseminated in the U.S. media about the condition of the Cuban leader. Ricardo Alarcon, the President of Cuba's National Assembly, told an Italian news channel that Fidel Castro was "recovering, is animated and surely laughing at what people say worldwide about his health and the situation in the country".

The eople of Cuba will never be able to forget the achievements of their "commandante". They know that without the leadership qualities of Castro, they would not have been able to withstand the economic and political blockade imposed by the U.S.

Cuba has played a key role in the decolonisation process. Its role was decisive in the defeat of forces backed by the West in southern Africa. The presence of Cuban troops in Angola and their pivotal role in the defeat of the South African army paved the way for the independence of Namibia and eventually South Africa. Castro got the loudest applause among all the leaders present when Nelson Mandela took office as the President of South Africa. The people are aware that it is because of the revolution that they are able to avail themselves of the high-quality medical care and education, comparable to the best in the world, free.

Cuba, despite the dire economic conditions it had to endure for most of the 1990s, managed to extend humanitarian aid to other developing countries that were in greater need. Cubans willingly sacrificed whenever Castro saw a need for such acts. Cuban doctors and other medical professionals are doing humanitarian work in the least developed countries. Castro epitomises the half century of struggle the Cuban people have waged against imperialism and exploitation. With Raul Castro temporarily in the driver's seat, the Cuban people seem to be reassured that there will not be any possibility of a return to the bad old days when Cuba was a virtual colony of the U.S. and a playground for the Mafiosi.

The writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a close friend and admirer of Castro, gave an insight into his genius in the August 7 issue of Granma when he described an average working day of the Cuban leader. "His task of informative accumulation is a priority from the moment he wakes up. He breakfasts with no less than 200 pages of news of the entire world. During the day he is sent urgent news wherever he is; he calculates he has to read some 500 documents, to which one he has to add reports from the official services and from his visitors and anything that might interest his infinite curiosity." Marquez goes on to describe Castro as a "man of austere habits and insatiable illusions, with an old-fashioned education of cautious words and subdued tones and incapable of conceiving any idea that is not colossal".

Castro is known to have a soft corner for India. The photograph of Castro giving a warm hug to Indira Gandhi during the 1983 NAM summit in New Delhi is still etched in the memory of many Indians. Once the pro-U.S. tilt in Indian foreign policy started under the Narasimha Rao government, New Delhi chose to keep a safe distance from Havana. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Peres Roque was scheduled to come to New Delhi in May to hand over Castro's letter to Prime Minster Manmohan Singh inviting him to the NAM summit. Roque, however, had to cancel his trip as Manmohan Singh could not find the time to meet him. Before his hospitalisation, Castro had conveyed to Manmohan Singh his eagerness to have a substantive discussion with him on major global issues when he attends the summit.