No real change for Cuba

With news Thursday that 57-year-old Miguel Mario DiazCanel was selected by the Cuban assembly to be the island nation’s new president, many wonder if this means a new day for Cubans.

Unfortunately, the answer is probably not.

Raul Castro, 86-year-old head of the Communist Party, retains ultimate power, and consequently the regime’s practices of brutality and oppression will continue.

Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation, told Herald Radio that Diaz-Canel was more of the same.

“Cuba did not elect a new leader. He was selected by Raul Castro,” explained Gonzalez, who was born in Cuba and left at age 12 in 1972. “The Communist Party cannot afford to have a real opening because they’ll be swept away from power,” he continued.

Gonzalez explained that after President Obama took steps to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba, a few gained prosperity, but the Communists in power took notice and put an end to the burgeoning private enterprises.

We can hope that international pressure and a powerful cultural change will make Cuba a free nation one day, but this most recent installation of the apparatchik named Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel is just more of the same.