Miguel Díaz-Canel

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Miguel Díaz-Canel (2015)

Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez ( miˈɣel ˈdi.as kaˈnel , born April 20, 1960 in Falcón , Placetas ) is a Cuban politician and since April 19, 2018 President of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cuba . He has been President of the Republic of Cuba since October 10, 2019 and also First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) since April 19, 2021 .

Life

Origin, training and studies

Díaz-Canel completed his studies as an electronics engineer in 1982 and worked as a radio specialist in the Cuban armed forces until 1985 , where he held the rank of lieutenant colonel (Teniente Coronel). From April 1985 he taught at the Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas (UCLV) in Santa Clara . In addition to his teaching activities, he worked full-time for the Communist Party's youth organization, the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas (UJC), until 1987 .

In the 1980s he wore his then blonde hair long, listened to rock music and supported the maintenance of a nightclub for artists, rockers, bohemians and transvestites, which was considered suspicious in Cuba.

Between 1987 and 1989 he served internationalist missions in Nicaragua , where he was political commissioner of the UJC section of MINFAR . When he returned, he became the head of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) in Villa Clara Province . He was elected a member of the National Committee of the UJC and in 1991 a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. In 1993 he was appointed second secretary of the UJC National Committee.

Political career up to the presidency

In 1993 he became a member of the provincial committee of the PCC in Villa Clara and in 1994 elected its First Secretary, the highest public office at the regional level. Under his leadership, a cultural life that was particularly tolerant by Cuban standards was made possible in the province of Villa Clara. In contrast to other provincial officials at the time, he often wore T-shirts and also rode his bike to work for a long time, until the party forbade him to do so for safety reasons. In 2003 he moved from Villa Clara to the province of Holguín , where he also took over the post of First Party Secretary and thus the presidency of the government. In the same year, at the suggestion of Raúl Castro, at the age of 43, he was elected to the Politburo as the youngest politician to date , the highest body of the party, which currently has 14 members. In May 2009 he became Minister for Higher Education. On March 22, 2012, he gave up this post to take up his new position as Vice President of the Council of Ministers.

In the Cuban government since 1959, the same former guerrilla fighters, mostly born in the 1920s, have been represented. During the presidency of Raúl Castro, other members of the military came into high political offices. In contrast, Díaz-Canel belonged to the younger generation of successful party cadres alongside Marino Murillo . Like the other younger cadres, he stood for absolute loyalty to the state and party leadership within the strictly hierarchical political order. Díaz-Canel's rise was gradual and steady, whereas the political careers of several of his former board members of the Communist Youth Association ended inglorious after intermittent prominence, including those of Roberto Robaina , Otto Rivero , Carlos Valenciaga and Felipe Pérez Roque . According to reports from foreign media, Díaz-Canel was one of the witnesses against the disgraced Foreign Minister Robaina in 2002 and appeared alongside other former employees in a two-hour video documentary that was only shown to party cadres by the party leadership to prove the misconduct of the dismissed official. In the following year he was appointed to the Politburo.

On the VI. At the PCC party congress in April 2011, Díaz-Canel presented the draft resolution to the plenary session on the main report previously presented by the head of state and party leader Raúl Castro. This prominent role was seen as a sign of his rise in the party hierarchy. In addition to his executive position and his party offices, Díaz-Canel represents the constituency of Holguín as a member of the national parliament, the Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular .

On February 24, 2013 Díaz-Canel was appointed as the successor to 82-year-old José Ramón Machado Ventura as First Vice-President of the State Council and thus Cuba's “number two” after Raúl Castro .

Presidency

Miguel Díaz-Canel and İlham Əliyev

As expected, Díaz-Canel was nominated as the only candidate to succeed Raúl Castro as President of the Cuban Council of State and Ministers and was elected to the national parliament on April 19, 2018 with 99.83% of the votes (out of 603 of the 604 MPs present). This makes him the first President of Cuba to be born after the revolution . However, at least for the time being, he did not get the full power of the Castro brothers: Raúl remained head of the Communist Party, which according to the constitution has the leading role in the state.

After his election as President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers, he declared in his first speech to the National Assembly: "I accept the responsibility for which I was elected with the conviction that all Cubans will remain loyal to the legacy of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro ", and stressed the desire to defend and perfect the socialist way. In view of the difficult economic situation and the reforms initiated under Raúl, but only partially implemented, the pressure remains that the Díaz-Canel government will have to make further changes.

In April 2019, the new constitution came into force in Cuba , according to which there is a Cuban president for the first time since 1976. On October 10, 2019, Miguel Díaz-Canel was elected President of Cuba.

Private life

Miguel Díaz-Canel has a second marriage to the cultural scientist and tourism official Liz Cuesta Peraza. From his first marriage to the dentist Marta Villanueva, he has two grown children.

literature

Web links

Commons : Miguel Díaz-Canel  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Emilio Ichikawa: Teniente Coronel Miguel Díaz-Canel: Dos lecturas ( Memento of June 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) , December 8, 2013.
  2. ↑ By the grace of Castro - Miguel Díaz-Canel takes over in Cuba . In: Spiegel Online , accessed April 19, 2018.
  3. ↑ Cuba Shows Its Next President . In: Havana Times , February 25, 2013.
  4. ^ A b Juan Tamayo: Miguel Diaz-Canel, Cuba's new No. 2, respected as smart and personable . In: Miami Herald, February 24, 2013, accessed February 27, 2013.
  5. ↑ Andrea Rodriguez: Miguel Diaz-Canel, Raul Castro's likely heir-apparent, seen as a serious-minded party loyalist. In: Fox News of February 24, 2013, accessed January 22, 2014.
  6. ↑ Paul Haven: Miguel Diaz-Canel, First Vice President Of Cuba's Communist Party, Rose Gradually To Castro's No. 2 ( Memento of February 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: Huffington Post, February 25, 2013, accessed January 22, 2014.
  7. ↑ Expulsan del Partido Comunista de Cuba a ex canciller Roberto Robaina . In: La Red 21 of August 1, 2002, accessed February 27, 2013 (Spanish).
  8. ^ El ex canciller cubano Roberto Robaina es expulsado del PCC y cesado como diputado ( Memento of February 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: Diario de Avisos of August 3, 2002, accessed February 27, 2013 (Spanish).
  9. ^ Resolución sobre el Informe Central . In: Granma, April 19, 2011, accessed March 31, 2012 (Spanish).
  10. ↑ Gerardo Arreola: Aprobado, el plan de reforma de Raul Castro; eligen al Comité Central . In: La Jornada, April 19, 2011, accessed March 31, 2012 (Spanish).
  11. ↑ Arleen Rodríguez Derivet: Ratificado Raúl como presidente del Consejo de Estado y del Consejo de Ministros (+ photos) Article from February 24, 2013 on cubadebate.cu . Retrieved April 21, 2021 (Spanish).
  12. ↑ Miguel Díaz-Canel elected as the new President of Cuba. Retrieved April 21, 2018 .
  13. ↑ Andreas Ross: The end of the Castro era: A child of the revolution. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. April 18, 2018. Retrieved April 18, 2018 .
  14. ↑ No upstart - no stopgap solution: Castro's successor Diaz-Canel. Retrieved April 19, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Bert Hoffmann: Cuba after Raúl: The pressure to reform remains high. Retrieved May 29, 2018 .
  16. ^ Cuba: Díaz-Canel elected first president since 1976
  17. ↑ Mimi Whitefield and Nora Gámez Torres: ¿Quién es Miguel Díaz-Canel, el nuevo gobernante de Cuba? In: El Nuevo Herald . April 19, 2018, Retrieved April 21, 2018 (Spanish).
  18. ↑ Sandra Weiss: Miguel Díaz-Canel succeeds Raúl Castro as President of Cuba. In: Augsburger Allgemeine. April 19, 2018. Retrieved April 21, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Díaz-Canel, Miguel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, Miguel Mario (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban politician and Vice President of the Council of Ministers
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Falcón , Placetas , Cuba