Castro brothers attend Cuba parliament
Parliament expected name Raul Castro to new five-year term as president
Cuba's parliament reconvened Sunday with new membership and was expected to name Raul Castro to a new five-year-term as president. All were watching whether younger politicians might be tapped for other top leadership posts, providing hints of a possible future successor.
Castro fuelled speculation on Friday when he talked of his possible retirement and suggested he has plans to resign at some point. It was unclear whether the 81-year-old leader was joking, but he promised his speech Sunday would be "interesting."
If a fresh face is named as one of his top deputies, it could indicate that his administration is settling on who might carry the country forward when those who fought in the 1959 revolution can no longer do so.
Raul Castro turns 82 this year and would be 86 when a new term ends. His top two lieutenants are also in their 80s.
"This National Assembly is important because it formally is going to govern the fate of the country for the next five years, which will be decisive for changing personnel — what I call the intergenerational transition," said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a Cuban economist and analyst who lectures at the University of Denver. "The intergenerational transition cannot be put off any longer."
The 612 members of parliament are due to be sworn in during the morning and then pick a new National Assembly president for the first time in 20 years, as longtime chief Ricardo Alarcon was not on the ballot this year.
The assembly will also nominate the Council of State, Cuba's maximum governing body, which is made up of the president, a first vice-president, five vice-presidents, a secretary and 23 other members.
The president also oversees the council of ministers, or Cabinet.
Castro has mulled two-term limits
Castro has spoken in the past of implementing two-term limits for public officials up to and including the president, as well as the importance of grooming new leaders to take over from his greying generation.
This would be his second full term after formally assuming the presidency in 2008. He took over provisionally in 2006 when his elder brother, Fidel, was stricken with a life-threatening intestinal illness.
Raul Castro is about halfway through a program of key social and economic reforms that have already seen the expansion of private business activity, legalized home and car sales, an easing of restrictions on foreign travel and the handover of fallow state land to independent farmers.
Cuban state media said both Castros received a standing ovation when they arrived at a Havana convention centre for Sunday's parliamentary gathering.
A photo posted online by the news agency Prensa Latina showed the brothers sitting next to each other at the assembly, along with first vice-president Jose Ramon Machado Ventura.
Foreign media were not invited to the early parts of the gathering, but were promised access to its closing moments.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/02/24/castro-raul-fidel.html
title-driven thread
also its going to be pretty frustrating when raul leaves because everyone who knows about cuba will have to read loads of articles about how everything is going to wank because its in the middle of a semi economic crisis and it will go on for ages then nothing will change and nobody will learn any lessons
and in the end what else is core state marxism apart from about how it will effect me
Miguel Diaz-Canel became the face of generational change in Cuba, as Communist Party leaders on Sunday tapped him to succeed Raul Castro as president in five years’ time.
Diaz-Canel, 52, was formally elected first vice-president of Cuba’s Council of State, putting him first in the line of succession to the presidency.
“I am going to resign. I am about to turn 82. I have the right to retire. Don’t you believe me?” Castro said, smiling to reporters after accompanying Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to the old Soviet cemetery near Havana.
On a more serious note, in a nationally broadcast speech on Sunday he called the “historic” naming of Diaz-Canel a “final step in configuring the country’s future leadership, through the slow and orderly transfer of the main leadership positions to new generations.”
Indeed, if Diaz-Canel he comes to lead Cuba, he would be the first leader of the regime whose entire life has been under the Castro regime which started in January 1959.
A former military man, Diaz-Canel also has been a university professor in his home province, Villa Clara. A careful and deliberate speaker, he also has been a leader of the Communist Youth Union, and went on an international “mission” to Nicaragua during the first leftist Sandinista government.
Diaz-Canel over the years rose up the political ranks, leading the party in Villa Clara in central Cuba, before being chosen to lead it in Holguin province in the east. He was bumped up to the Politburo in 2003.
In recent months, Diaz-Canel has become more prominent in official media. He already has stood in for Raul Castro at presidential inaugurations in other nations.
i am pretty sure he was education minister when i was last their and the system did really well through the battle of ideas even if it in turn set up another contradiction with the economic crisis not meaning they could continue progressing from that point
flash forward to biden's presidency