HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba’s first non-Castro leader since the 1959 revolution will be named by lawmakers on the island as soon as Wednesday, heading a younger generation of Communist officials who will be under pressure from ordinary Cubans to breathe life into the economy.
President Raul Castro, 86, is stepping down after 10 years in office and his replacement is expected to be First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, a 57-year-old engineer who embraces technology and appears socially liberal.
Diaz-Canel is a stalwart of the ruling Communist Party and is considered a safe bet to inherit the ideological mantle of Castro and other elderly leaders who helped Fidel Castro topple a U.S.-backed president six decades ago.
Wearing a dark suit in place of military fatigues, Castro entered the assembly with Diaz-Canel to a long ovation from the 604 legislators gathered at a convention center in a Havana suburb.
The rubber-stamp national assembly will select 30 other members of Cuba’s state council along with the replacement for Castro. Raul Castro’s brother, Fidel Castro, formally handed over power to him in 2008 as his health deteriorated, and he died in 2016 aged 90.
The new president and state council are due to be sworn in on Thursday but their names could be clear as soon as Wednesday if the list of candidates is made public.
While the assembly will promote younger leaders of government, Castro and other elders of the revolution will likely retain a degree of power on the Caribbean island as senior leaders of the Communist Party until a party congress set for 2021.
Diaz-Canel is likely to be cautious at first, seeking to consolidate support among conservatives despite desire among young Cubans for faster development. He is unlikely to challenge one-party rule.
Castro brought change, significantly thawing relations with the United States for the first time since the 1959 revolution that ousted Fulgencio Batista. He also introduced market reforms to one of the world’s last Soviet-style centrally planned economies.
But Cuba’s economy remains smaller than it was in 1985, when it had the support of Communist ally, the Soviet Union, and some Cubans are pessimistic about their lives improving.
The economy is suffering the effects of a crisis in oil benefactor Venezuela. Relations with the United States are strained anew under President Donald Trump and Cuba has few allies in the region.
“Right now, we don’t know what the future holds,” said Adriana Valdivia, 45, a teacher in Havana. “Raul is finished and Fidel is history.”
“I can’t see a way out to help Cubans live better, salaries are the same and don’t make ends meet, and now Trump is tightening the screws with the blockade, imagine that,” said Valdivia, who earns about $24 a month. The longstanding U.S. economic embargo on the island is commonly referred to as a blockade by the Cuban government.
The next president should “increase the speed of change in Cuba while preserving the good things,” said blogger Harold Cardenas, 32, adding that resistance from within the party to Raul Castro’s economic reforms had held the country back.
NEW GENERATION, NEW IDEAS?
Within the confines of the one-party system, Cuba presents its political processes as democratic.
A commission drawn from labor unions and other civic groups is expected to present the national assembly with just one name for each post on the state council. The assembly will vote to ratify them on Wednesday, party newspaper Granma said.
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, 60, is expected to get a senior role in the new government, after helping to nurture the detente reached with former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2014, and renewing Cuba’s traditional defiance toward Washington after Trump shifted policies.
Mercedes Lopez Acea, the 53-year-old head of the Communist Party in Havana, could take on a larger role.
Many Cubans say they feel distant from politics, preferring to focus on making ends meet within the limited economic opportunities that opened as Castro allowed more small businesses in recent years.
“Politics is not my strong point,” said Diadenis Sanabria, 34, working in a state-owned restaurant in Havana’s Vedado district.
“But I don’t think a change of chief is going to change my life.”
Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Sarah Marsh and Frances Kerry
Bagikan Berita Ini
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