(Havana) Cuba has repealed the age limit to apply for the presidential election, in a constitutional reform adopted on Friday by the Parliament.
This limit had been set at 60 years, for a first candidacy, by the 2019 Constitution. The duration of the presidential mandate of five years, renewable once, and the minimum age of 35 years to arise, remain unchanged.
“The project presented by the Council of State” aims to “do not limit the possibility for people in full exercise of their physical and mental faculties, over the age of 60, with experience enriched by their work, loyalty and a revolutionary journey, as well as a strong commitment to the Revolution, to be elected to assume such responsibility,” said the president of the National Assembly of Popular Power, Esteban Lazo.
The constitutional reform was adopted unanimously by the 440 members present of the Monocameral Parliament, which has 470 seats in total.
According to the session broadcast by state television, each of the present deputies arose, each in turn, to approve the bill by launching a sound “yes” in the hemicycle.
PHOTO HANDOUT, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The deputy and former leader Raul Castro and the current president of Cuba Miguel Diaz-Canel
The deputy and former leader Raul Castro, 94, initiator of the bill, was the first to approve the new provision which will come into force for the presidential election of 2028.
The current president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, 65, was elected in 2018, then re-elected in 2023, by indirect suffrage. In Cuba, the president is chosen by the deputies, themselves appointed during a popular election where there are always the same number of candidates as seats.
In 2019, the registration in the constitution of the limitation of the presidential mandate and the age limit had constituted a turning point after 60 years of power by the Fidel brothers then Raul Castro.
In 2006, Fidel Castro (1926-2016) was forced to entrust the country’s reins to his youngest due to health problems. He had stayed in power 47 years.
Raul Castro had officially became president of Cuba in 2008, at the age of 76. At the end of his first mandate, he announced that he would leave the presidency in 2018.
In 2021, he ceded the post of first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party (CCC) to Miguel Diaz-Canel.
The communist island of 9.7 million inhabitants has been going through its worst economic crisis for three decades, with shortages of all kinds, chronic cuts of electricity and an unprecedented wave of emigration.
To the structural weaknesses of its planned and centralized economy are added the failure of a recent monetary reform and a strengthening of the American embargo.