HAVANA — Fidel Castro suggested Thursday that his health is failing, saying that four years from now he doesn’t expect to be following current events.
In an online column titled “Reflections of Comrade Fidel,” the 82-year-old Cuban leader appeared to be pondering his own mortality, saying Cuban officials “shouldn’t feel bound by my occasional Reflections, my state of health or my death.”
“I have had the rare privilege of observing events over such a long time. I receive information and meditate calmly on those events,” he wrote. “I expect I won’t enjoy that privilege in four years, when Obama’s first presidential term has ended.”
He didn’t elaborate, but suggested he was stepping out of government affairs, writing: “I have reduced the Reflections as I had planned this year, so I won’t interfere or get in the way of the (Communist) Party or government comrades in the constant decisions they must make.”
The bulk of the column was devoted to praising Obama, in part for his decision to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, recalling his thoughts Tuesday as he watched Obama assume the “leadership of the empire.”
The column, released Thursday, was his second in as many days. Before that, Castro hadn’t been heard from in more than a month, fueling rumors that he had suffered a stroke or lapsed into a coma.
