Continuity is, unsurprisingly, the order of the day in Cuba. In a poll played in advance, Miguel Diaz-Canel, 62, was re-elected on Wednesday at the head of the communist island for a second and final term, in a country where the opposition is illegal and which is going through its worst crisis. economy in three decades.
The single candidacy of this electronics engineer by training received 97.66% of the votes of the 470 members of the National Assembly. “Given the results announced, I declare Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez President of the Republic,” declared Esteban Lazo, the President of the Chamber in the presence of Raúl Castro, 92.
First civilian to lead the country since the revolution
First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) since 2021, Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez was in 2018 the first civilian to take the reins of the country after the presidencies of the brothers Fidel (1926-2016) and Raúl Castro, in power since the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959. He was responsible for accelerating the slow economic reform initiated by his predecessor and political mentor Raúl Castro (2008-2018).
However, it has not been able to stem the crisis that the island has been going through since 2018. It is the worst in three decades, with shortages of food, medicine and fuel, due to the tightening of the American embargo in place since 1962, and the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic which the government fought with nationally designed and developed vaccines.
In early 2021, the president implemented a sweeping currency reform ending the one dollar to Cuban peso rate that had prevailed for decades, but it caused significant distortions in the national economy. It also encouraged self-employment and authorized SMEs, but these measures proved insufficient to improve the economic situation.
Inflationary spiral
Above all, the monetary reform caused an inflationary spiral and a strong devaluation of the peso, raising strong discontent among the population. The Cuban currency thus went in two years from 24 to 120 pesos for one dollar at the official rate, while on the black market it is quoted at 185 pesos for one dollar.
One of the “rare successes” of Miguel Diaz-Canel was “the transition to a regime led by a new generation born after 1959, which does not bear the name of Castro”, considers Jorge Duany, of the International University of Florida. He stresses, however, that his “greatest failure was the mismanagement of the demonstrations” of July 2021, the largest on the island since 1959. They left one dead and dozens injured. More than 1,300 people have also been arrested and nearly 500 sentenced to up to 25 years in prison, according to the Miami-based human rights organization Cubalex. The crisis has led to the unprecedented exodus of more than 300,000 Cubans in 2022 alone.