Castro rule nears end; Diaz-Canel is successor
HAVANA >> Cuba’s National Assembly cleared the way for the end of Castro rule on Wednesday, naming longtime Communist Party figure Miguel Díaz-Canel as the sole candidate for head of state.
The move virtually ensured that the 57-year-old Díaz-Canel — long groomed for leadership — would replace President Raúl Castro as the island’s leader and close out nearly 60 years of control by Fidel Castro, who died in 2016 at age 90, and his younger brother Raúl.
The appointment of Díaz-Canel was expected and underscored a transition to younger generation born after the 1959 communist revolution. But Díaz-Canel is also seen as a steady hand who is unlikely to push major policy shifts or reform.
For years, the nation has gradually tested greater economic and social freedoms at home, while also navigating new and complicated political openings with the United States forged during the Obama administration.
The nomination of Díaz-Canel — along with 31 other members of Cuba’s ruling Council of State — was to be voted on Wednesday and is scheduled to be announced today.
In Cuba’s strictly managed political process, his public naming as the lone candidate made it a near certainty that Díaz-Canel would emerge victorious. He is as the first member outside the Castro family to rule Cuba since communist forces ousted a U.S.-backed government in one of the defining moments of the Cold War.
A consensus builder, Díaz-Canel is part of a Cuban generation who came of age in the shadow of the olive-drab-clad revolutionaries now in their 80s and 90s. He is likely to make decisions in concert with the country’s communist brain trust.
“You can look at the Raúl Castro and Díaz-Canel as mentor and disciple,” said Carlos Alzugaray, a former Cuban diplomat.
The nominees for Council of State — the leadership’s inner circle — included Cuba’s first black politicians for the position of first vice president, and three female vice presidents.
But almost as important were those not named. They included some hard-line elderly revolutionaries such as José Ramón Machado Ventura, who fought with the Castro brothers and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine Marxist, in the Cuban revolution.
Though all are strict party loyalists, the relative youth of the new council suggested a passing of the torch even though Raúl Castro, 86, will remain head of the powerful Communist Party.
“It’s very significant. It shows that Raúl has been successful in bringing into retirement much of the octogenarian group,” said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a former Cuban government analyst and now a professor of political science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “These people have been named for their obedience to the party. But this will strengthen the position of continuing reform along the lines we have been seeing.”