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Raul Castro rejuvenates Cuban leadership with another appointment
Mar 22, 2012, 21:01 GMT
Havana - Cuban President Raul Castro made another move Thursday to rejuvenate his Cabinet, as he removed two historic communist officials from their jobs and promoted a 52-year-old to the position of vice president of the Council of Ministers.
In a brief note, the Cuban Communist Party daily Granma said Miguel Diaz-Canel, who was until now education minister, would replace Jose Ramon Fernandez, a veteran 89-year-old military official who fought in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
Diaz-Canel thus joins the seven-member leadership of the island, which also holds since 2009 economist Marino Murillo, 51.
Fernandez, the man he is replacing, will become an 'advisor' to Raul Castro.
Castro, who is 80, also changed the leadership of the science ministry, replacing Jose Miyar Barrueco, 80, with Elba Rosa Perez Montoya, whose age and past history was not given.
Lack of trust in young leaders during the over several decades is widely blamed for the conspicuous lack of renewal in the near half-century-long Cuban rule by the Castro family.
In the latest high-profile case, in 2009, Felipe Perez Roque was sacked as foreign minister and Carlos Lage was removed as executive secretary of the Council of Ministers due to their 'unworthy roles,' in the words of historic Cuban leader Fidel Castro, 85, although no further details were given.
Raul Castro acknowledged in the Communist Party Congress of April 2011 the need to rejuvenate the party's ranks.
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