Cuba’s Parliament picks first non-Castro leader in decades
Havana: The Castro brothers’ six-decade grip on power in Cuba approached its end Wednesday as the island’s National Assembly named number two Miguel Diaz-Canel as the sole candidate for the presidency.
The silver-haired 57-year-old, who is currently first vice president and a top Communist Party official, is to be confirmed on Thursday as the successor to Raul Castro, who himself succeeded his elder brother Fidel.
On Wednesday, the National Assembly opened a historic two-day meeting to elect a successor to the 86-year-old Castro, ushering in a new era in the Caribbean island nation’s history.
“I have the honorable mission of putting forward comrade Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez as President of the Council of State,” commission president Gisela Duarte told Assembly delegates, effectively ending any suspense over the identity of Cuba’s new leader.
Delegates immediately broke into applause and the two men rose to share an embrace as Cuba’s two other vice presidents, both veterans of the revolution, looked on from the row behind.
His nomination as the head of the 31-member Council of State will be formally confirmed, when Cuba marks the anniversary of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion when Fidel Castro’s forces defeated 1400 US-backed rebels seeking to overthrow him.