Raúl Castro said: “When he completes his two terms, if he works well (…) he should remain” as first secretary of the PCC
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 22 July 2025 — The elimination of the age limit as a requirement for being elected president of the Republic of Cuba has unleashed a wave of speculation about who will be hand-picked to this position, which, as we know, will not be an election.
It’s not necessary to quote Article 5 of the Constitution, which Fidel Castro drafted in its entirety, to recognize that, hierarchically, the position of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) ranks above that of President of the Republic. These two positions have traditionally been held by a single individual, with the exception of the period between April 2018 and April 2021, when Raúl Castro remained at the head of the party while Miguel Díaz-Canel held the office of President.
To confirm what is stated in the title of this commentary, we must recall Raúl Castro’s speech during Díaz-Canel’s inauguration on April 18, 2018, when he bluntly warned:
“When he completes his two terms, if he performs well and our Party’s Central Committee approves it (…), he should stay on. The same thing we are doing with him, he will maintain with his replacement. His ten years as president of the Council of State and ministers will be over, and for the three remaining years until the congress, he will remain as First Secretary to facilitate the safe transition and spare us the learning curve of his replacement until he retires to care for his grandchildren.”
Thus, the successor appointed to the presidency in 2028 will remain under the supervision and tutelage of Díaz-Canel until 2031.
The only thing that has changed is that the title of the position is now President of the Republic, which Díaz-Canel will hold until April 2028. The ninth Party Congress will be held between April 16 and 19, 2026, and barring a miracle or a curse, the current first secretary will be reelected for another five years, that is, until April 2031. Thus, the successor appointed to the presidency in 2028 will remain under the supervision and tutelage of Díaz-Canel until 2031.
The proposal to limit the holding of “fundamental political and state offices” to a maximum of two consecutive five-year terms was approved at the Sixth Party Congress in 2011 and ratified at the Seventh in 2016, but it wasn’t until the new Constitution was approved in 2019 that this proposal became legally valid. The peculiarity is that Article 126 merely states that the President of the Republic is elected for a five-year term and may only serve up to two consecutive terms, after which he or she may not serve again. The Constitution makes no mention of the tenure of the First Secretary of the Party.
The curious thing is that this detail is not specified in any of the PCC’s programmatic documents, not even in its statutes, where the furthest it goes in this regard appears in Article 21, which establishes that the renewal of leadership positions will be done “by establishing limits on tenure by time and age, according to the functions and complexities of each responsibility.”
At the time when the commander-in-chief ruled the country as he pleased, the question of who is coming after Fidel Castro couldn’t even be asked, because there was no one but himself. During Raúl Castro’s years, the consolidated generalship gained importance as a power behind the throne in the form of the Gaesa military conglomerate. The stigma of “hand-picked” that weakens Díaz-Canel’s leadership raises the question of whether he, from within the Party, will be the one to follow his presumed replacement, or whether the shadow of sabers will remain behind, or above, a fiction of civilian government.
In any case, his utility will continue to be that he can proclaim again that “the combat order is given,” even if he didn’t give it. That is, of course, unless something happens to turn everything upside down.
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