HAVANA (Reuters) - Communist-run Cuba extended the term of its current leadership to April on Thursday, signaling a two-month delay in the historic handover from Raul Castro to a new president, while announcing tighter regulations on the non-state sector.
Castro, 86, was originally set to step down in February after two consecutive terms, ending nearly 60 years of Castro brothers’ rule and marking a transition from the leaders of the 1959 revolution to a new, younger generation.
“When the National Assembly is constituted, I will have concluded my second and last mandate, and Cuba will have a new president,” Castro said, according to state-run media.
“All that is left for me is to wish you and our people a happy new year,” he said.
“The economic measures announced today suggest a continued slowing down, if not an undoing, of the economic reforms implemented between 2010 and 2016,” said Michael Bustamante, an assistant professor of Latin American history at Florida International University.
Cuba’s political transition comes as it faces a host of challenges from declining aid from socialist ally Venezuela to U.S. President Donald Trump’s partial reversal of the U.S.-Cuban detente and tightening of the decades-old U.S. embargo.
“We have witnessed a serious and gradual deterioration in relations with the United States that cannot be blamed on our country,” Castro was cited by state-run media as saying.
He said the United States was fabricating pretexts to continue its failed policy toward Cuba. The Trump administration said this year that U.S. diplomats in Havana had been victims of “health attacks”.