The return of Fidel

Fidel Castro's health has improved sufficiently for him to give an nearly hour-long interview broadcast on Cuba's official television network Tuesday, the first time he has been seen on TV apart from several short videos since falling ill 10 months ago.

The reappearance of the 80-year-old dictator suggests that he may be back in overall command of Cuba's totalitarian state while his brother Raul, five years younger, remains in charge of the everyday running of the government. Castro's return is bad news for Cuban dissidents.

"Fidel Castro's appearance will slow the whole process of reform and intellectual debate that was starting up," dissident Manuel Cuesta Morua, who is a leader of Arco Progresista, an alliance of social democratic groups, told Reuters news agency.

Raul Castro, who has been defense minister and armed forces commander since the 1959 revolution, was reported as saying that his elder brother looked "magnificent" on television. But for the Cuban people, Castro's gradual recovery probably means that they will face more years of Castro-Communist tyranny.

Castro was rushed to a hospital with internal bleeding after giving a speech on July 26 and for months was reported to be close to death. The exact nature of his illness is still a state secret, although a Spanish doctor who was flown to Cuba to attend Castro following a botched operation, told colleagues the Cuban dictator suffered from diverticulitis, a weakening of the large intestine.

The prospect of the dictator fading from the scene aroused hope that under Raul, life would improve for the Cuban people. The younger Castro is said to favor major economic reforms along the lines of polices adopted by Communist China, where capitalism has been encouraged within a one-party state similar to the Cuban model.

Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva, a researcher at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy at the University of Havana who is currently studying at Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies says that changes are already taking shape. "There is a debate in Cuba like I've never seen," he told The Associated Press, "For one, there is a public discussion about the reality of (low) Cuban salaries and high prices. The state knows about these things and is listening to the opinions of the people. I've never seen Cuba at such a moment."

Leading up to his 52-minute television appearance on a program called "The Round Table," Castro has returned to public life by writing a series of articles on world issues, characteristically attacking the United States and accusing the Bush administration of heartless imperialism.

It is to be feared that if Castro's health continues to improve, the Cuban people will suffer. Dissident Morua said that Castro had become irrelevant to the daily lives of Cubans and in the television interview Castro was "talking about things that have little to do with Cuban reality today."

It is sad to think that dictators and longevity seem to go together. Spain's Franco lived to 83 and Chile's Pinochet died at 91, although he was out of power for the last 16 years of his life.

The 50th anniversary of Castro's seizure of absolute power is less than two years away. Poor Cuba.