Cuban party electing new leaders amid generational shift
HAVANA, Cuba (AFP) — Delegates of Cuba’s Communist Party were electing a new Central Committee on Sunday, with results due Monday as the historic congress closes with a sendoff for longtime party leader Raul Castro.
The island’s dire economic crisis tops the agenda as 300 delegates from across the country continue to meet in Havana, with the leadership vote expected Sunday afternoon.
The 114-member Central Committee is set to meet Monday once voting results are announced and will elect leaders to the powerful Politburo for the 2021-2026 period, official news portal Cubadebate reported.
When the 89-year-old Castro steps down as first secretary of the Communist Party — the most powerful position in Cuba — it will end a nearly six-decade family hold on power that started in 1959 under his revolutionary brother, Fidel, who died in 2016.
As members of the post-revolutionary generation take power, Castro will yield power to the country’s 60-year-old president, Miguel Diaz-Canel.
Two other revolution-era figures will also stand down: Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, 90, the party’s number two, and Commander Ramiro Valdes, 88.
But even as younger Cubans rise to power, no major changes in policy are immediately expected.
Most pressing on the congress’s agenda is the economy, which plummeted by 11 percent in 2020 — the worst decline since 1993 — due in no small part to recent strengthening of the US embargo and the coronavirus pandemic.
Castro however committed the country to “respectful” talks with the US administration of Joe Biden. Ties with the United States had worsened under Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump.
In his last major speech as party head, Castro on Friday called for “revitalising the process of updating the economic and social model,” an initiative he began cautiously in 2008.
But Castro told delegates on Friday that Cuba would not renounce “the principles of the revolution and socialism.”
Cuba, with a population of approximately 11.2 million, faces recurrent shortages and must import 80 percent of what it consumes.
