Interior Minister steps down for health reasons; top deputy replaces him
Cuba has a new Minister of the Interior. Corps Gen. Abelardo Colomé Ibarra has resigned, for reasons of health, and has been replaced by his top deputy, Division Gen. Carlos Fernández Gondín.
Gondín’s place will be taken by Vice Adm. Julio César Gandarilla Bermejo, current chief of Military Counterintelligence and member of the Communist Party’s Central Committee.
Colomé’s resignation, submitted on Oct. 21, was accepted on Monday (Oct. 26), according to an official note from the Council of Ministers published Tuesday in the daily newspaper Granma.
The Council, at the proposal of President Raúl Castro, agreed to remove Colomé from his post as a member of that panel and transferred him to the Army Reserve.
It also awarded him the Order for Service to the Motherland (First Degree) “in consideration of his extensive revolutionary trajectory.”
In a three-paragraph letter of resignation to “Dear Raúl,” Colomé wrote:
“Out of my 76 years of life, I have dedicated 60 to the Revolution and, so long as I live, I shall remain a soldier in its service and a militant in the Communist Party that educated me.
“However, in recent times I have perceived that my health is no longer the same and I feel the duty to submit a formal resignation to the high political, state, government and military posts that I have been honored to hold under your leadership and that of the invincible Fidel.
“Without appearing immodest, I adopt this necessary decision with the satisfaction of having fulfilled my duty, especially with full confidence in the justness of the Cuban Revolution, socialism and its victorious future. A strong hug.”
In Cuba, the Interior Ministry is in charge of law enforcement and internal order, through its departments of Crime Prevention, Technical Operations and Security. Crime prevention is dealt with by the national police, while offenses against state security (espionage, sabotage, etc.) are handled by specialized divisions.
A founder of the Cuban Communist Party and a designated Hero of the Republic for his revolutionary activities since 1956, Colomé has held the post of Minister of the Interior since 1989.
[For his official biography, in Spanish, click here.]
Like Colomé, Fernández Gondín, 77, is a founder of the Cuban Communist Party and a Hero of the Republic for his revolutionary activities since 1958, especially as a leader of Cuban forces in Angola in the mid-1970s. A member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, he was deputy chief of the Directorate of Military Counterintelligence before being appointed Colomé’s second-in-command in 1989.
[His official biography, in Spanish, can be accessed here.]
[In photo at top, Fernández Gondín is seen greeting Vietnam’s Minister of Public Security, Tran Dai Quang, during a visit to Hanoi in August of this year.]
