A historic transition is about to take place on the island of Cuba. The Castros, in power since 16 February 1959 with Fidel, then with his brother Raul from 24 February 2008, will no longer lead the Caribbean nation. Cuba's National Assembly has designated the current number two of the Cuban executive as the sole candidate for the succession to the presidency: Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez.

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Miguel Diaz-Canel is an engineer with a keen sensitivity to the climate issue

The announcement came on Wednesday 18 April from the president of the National Candidacy Commission, Gisela Duarte: it now falls to the 31 members of the Council of State to give the decision its final confirmation. The vote is expected at 9am local time today — 3pm in Italy — on the 57th anniversary of the victory at the Bay of Pigs: in 1961, the Castrist army succeeded in repelling the landing of counter-revolutionary troops backed by the United States.

Diaz-Canel belongs to the first generation of Cuban leaders born after the 1959 revolution and the ousting of dictator Fulgencio Batista. A graduate in electronic engineering, he led the Cuban Communist Party in the province of Villa Clara and has been Raul's right-hand man since 2013. In the area he administered, he championed the creation of the cultural centre El Mejunje, the first to be run by the LGBT community. He is regarded as particularly sensitive to the climate cause: it was he who represented Cuba at COP 21 in Paris in 2015.

The sole presidential candidate was not required to put forward a programme, since — in keeping with Cuban rules — he will be expected to implement the "guidelines" voted on by the party and Parliament, which set out the political strategy to be followed until 2030. Nevertheless, it is clear to everyone that the terrain on which the new president will have to prove himself is the economic one.

The new president: economic challenges and relations with the United States

The Caribbean island's productive system recorded a recovery during 2017 (the gross domestic product grew by 1.6 per cent). Nevertheless, the nation remains heavily dependent on imports and on the support of a long-standing ally, Venezuela, which is itself grappling with an economic situation that is far from rosy. Raul Castro himself launched, upon taking power, a series of economically liberal reforms, aimed in particular at enabling the development of small private businesses.

Furthermore, it will be necessary to see what position Diaz-Canel takes on relations with the United States. Following the historic rapprochement between Cuba and Washington — which culminated in the visit of then US president Barack Obama to Havana in March 2016 — the process of diplomatic reconciliation effectively came to a halt with the election of Donald Trump.