Cuba picks new leader

THE Cuban Government has selected 57-year-old First Vice President Miguel Mario DiazCanel Bermudez as the sole candidate to succeed President Raul Castro in a transition aimed at ensuring that the country’s single-party system outlasts the ageing revolutionaries who created it.

The certain approval of Mr Diaz-Canel (right) by members of the National Assembly will install someone from outside the Castro family in the country’s highest government office for the first time in nearly six decades.

Mr Castro, 86, will remain head of the Communist Party, designated by the constitution as “the superior guiding force of society and the state”.

As a result, Mr Castro will remain the most powerful person in Cuba for the time being. His departure from the presidency is nonetheless a symbolically charged moment for a country accustomed to 60 years of absolute rule first by revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and, for the past decade, his younger brother.

Most Cubans know their first vice president as an uncharismatic figure who until recently maintained a public profile so low it was virtually non-existent. That image changed slightly this year with more public appearances.