Raul successor waits in wings:

Lat/Am

After burying Fidel Castro, Cuba is 15 months away from seeing his brother, Raul, give up the presidency. For the first time in almost 60 years, the president won’t be named Castro.

The man in line for the job is VicePresident Miguel Diaz-Canel, who is relatively young at 56, outside the small circle of guerrilla war veterans and not a family member.

The grey-haired Diaz-Canel, who favors jeans or more formal suits and ties, has been a discreet communist party operator who lacks Fidel Castro’s charisma and Raul’s military experience.

But he has been “a good soldier in the shadows,” Christopher Sabatini, an international policy lecturer at New York’s Columbia University, told AFP. President

named DiazCanel as his deputy in 2013.

While Raul Castro looks healthy at 85, he has vowed to step down in February 2018 during the next communist party congress, though he would likely remain the party’s chief.

His brother, who was buried on Sunday after dying on Nov 25 at age 90, clung to power from 1959 until an illness forced him to hand the presidency to Raul in 2006.

Tall and affable, Diaz-Canel lacks the oratory skills of Fidel Castro but Raul gave him a ringing endorsement when he named him vice-president in 2013.

“Comrade Diaz-Canel is neither a novice nor an improviser,” Raul Castro said. (AFP)

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