Cuba will have a new president on Wednesday, and for the first time in decades, his last name won’t be “Castro.”
Wednesday morning, the Cuban National Assembly met to vote in a successor to Raul Castro, who took over in 2008, when his brother, Fidel Castro, became too sick to lead the Communist nation. In effect, the Castro brothers have been at the helm of the small island country since the late 1950s.
The vote will be by secret ballot and the results will be available on Thursday, but surprises are unlikely. Castro’s vice president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, is expected to be named Cuba’s president; he’s Castro’s chosen successor, and he’s been groomed for the position for decades. Raul Castro may be giving up administrative power, but he will still exercise control over Diaz-Canel as head of the country’s Communist Party, The Washington Post reports.
Americans shouldn’t expect much change from the Castro era to the Diaz-Canel era. They’re both party loyalists, and Diaz-Canel is younger and more skilled at handling the administrative aspects of the job of “dictator” — something the Castro brothers struggled with even as they maintained an iron rule over the island nation for nearly 60 years.
It’s also not likely members of Cuba’s Communist Party will “go rogue” with their votes.
But, WaPo points out, there is one glimmer of hope: along with voting on Castro’s immediate successor, Cuban legislators, Cuba’s National Assembly, will vote on the 32 members of Cuba’s ruling council, and some of those members, revolutionaries from the 1960s who are now elderly like Castro, may choose to leave with the man who helped lead the revolution, making way for younger, more modern leaders.
They’ll still be Communist, of course, but younger legislators might be more open to concessions that open Cuba up to the larger world in productive ways.