Miguel Diaz-Canel, 62, was unexpectedly re-elected president of Cuba on Wednesday, a communist-ruled island where any opposition is illegal, vowing to “solve the problems due to inefficiency” in the country, which is facing deepest economic crisis experienced in three decades.

The electrical engineer, the only candidate, received 97.66% of the 470 votes of the Cuban parliament. 459 of the 462 present members of the Cuban national delegation voted for him.

The first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (CCP) from 2021 called in his inauguration speech for his government to “solve the problems of inefficiency” in the country in order to “increase the supply of goods and services and control the inflation”.

He also condemned the “bureaucracy”, “indifference” and “unacceptable corruption” which are “brakes to the country’s progress”, at a time when the island has been faced with “deep difficulties”.

“I declare Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermuda president of the Republic,” declared Esteban Lasso, the president of the Cuban parliament, under the watchful eye of Raul Castro, 92 years old, a little earlier.

In his traditional khaki uniform, the latter congratulated the re-elected president by shaking his hands.

The parliamentary process, which only state media was allowed to cover, also saw Vice President Salvador Valdes Mesa, 77, re-elected. The parliament also re-elected its president Esteban Lasso and its vice president Ana Maria Marie Machado.

Mr. Díaz-Canel became in 2018 the first citizen to assume power in the country after the brothers Fidel Castro (1926-2016) and Raul Castro, who exercised it after the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959 and the overthrow of the Fulgencio dictatorship Batista.

He undertook to speed up the slow economic reform started by his predecessor and political mentor Raul Castro (2008-2018).

Shortcomings

But it has not been able to stem the economic crisis that Cuba has been experiencing since 2018. It is the deepest in three decades, with shortages of food, medicine and fuel, due to the strengthening of the US embargo imposed since 1962, as well as the consequences of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

In early 2021, he implemented a currency reform, ending the official 1:1 exchange rate between the Cuban peso and the US dollar, which had been in place for decades and had caused major distortions in the Cuban economy.

It also encouraged the activity of self-employed and small and medium enterprises, but these measures proved insufficient to improve the economic situation.

“It did not make a complete and total transition to a mixed economy,” according to Arturo López-Levy, a Cuban international relations expert working in the US. “Some economic changes (anticipated) didn’t happen, and others caused a lot of skepticism in its implementation.”

The currency reform led to skyrocketing inflation and a large devaluation of the peso, causing intense discontent among the population.

The Cuban currency fell within two years from 24 to 120 pesos to the dollar at the official exchange rate, while on the black market the exchange rate is 185:1.

“Double economic crisis”

According to the opponent of the communist government Manuel Cuesta, the re-election of Mr. Díaz-Canel is recorded in the middle of a “double economic crisis”, “that of the model and that of the state political power responsible for finding political solutions”.

Jorge Duani, a Cuban who works at Florida International University, notes that one of Miguel Díaz-Canel’s “few successes” was the “transition to a regime ruled by a new generation, born after 1959, that does not bear the Castro name ».

The “biggest failure” he blames is the “bad management of the protests” of July 2021, which were described as the biggest on the island since 1959.

Those protests left one dead and dozens injured, while more than 1,300 people were arrested and nearly 500 sentenced to up to 25 years in prison, according to Cubalex, a Miami-based human rights group.

The crisis in Cuba has led to an unprecedented exodus of more than 300,000 Cubans in 2022.

Under Cuba’s new Constitution, which came into effect in 2019, the president cannot serve more than two consecutive terms, meaning Mr Díaz-Canel will remain in power until 2028.