Havana---Cuba's ruling Communist Party has agreed to hold a party congress next year and approve a new electoral law, state run media said.
It was not immediately clear if the meeting portends real change in Cuba, which is gearing up to restore diplomatic relations with the United States under an accord announced last year and is under pressure to enact significant market-based reforms for its people, many of whom survive on only 20 dollars a month.
The holding of the party congress in April 2016 was announced Monday by the state run newspaper Granma and other state run media.
Such a meeting is the highest-level gathering of the party, which was founded 50 years ago by Fidel Castro with the merger of three parties that fought to oust US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista on January 1, 1959.
The new electoral law will govern "general elections" in 2017 that will yield a government that will run the island starting in February 2018. That marks the end of the 10-year deadline set for President Raul Castro to rule in Cuba.
At the request of Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother, a special congress of the ruling party set this 10-year limit for senior members of the government and the party.
The current electoral law is challenged by the opposition because it does not eliminate the ruling party's monopoly on power. But the new law is not expected to change significantly because this would require a constitutional amendment.
The last congress of the party, held in April 2011, approved timid market-oriented reforms overseen by Raul Castro, who is now 83.
It also elected him as first secretary of the ruling party. Fidel Castro ceded power to him in 2006 for health reasons.
The state run media did not say what other documents will be debated at the party congress or how the election law, in force for the past 40 years, might be changed.
AFP
