Díaz-Canel's re-election signifies the continuity of the Revolution and Socialism in Cuba.

José Reinaldo Carvalho, 247 - Miguel Díaz-Canel was re-elected last Wednesday (19) as president of Cuba by the National Assembly of People's Power, the highest institutional body of popular sovereignty in the Caribbean socialist country. Díaz-Canel has been tested and approved at the head of the country since he was first elected in 2018 and three years later became first secretary of the Communist Party, the most important post in the party that led the Revolution and the construction of socialism in Cuba. Successor to Fidel and Raúl, Miguel Díaz-Canel is the leader of continuity to take on the new complex challenges that lie ahead for the country.

Although he is the first president of Cuba born after the Revolution, Díaz-Canel is not a newcomer to revolutionary politics, but an experienced leader. In 1987, he joined the Union of Young Communists, and in 1993 he joined the Communist Party, of whose Political Bureau he has been a member since 1997. He was Minister of Higher Education from 2009 to 2012, and became Vice-President of the Council of Ministers in 2012. As Raúl Castro said at the 8th Party Congress (2021), Díaz-Canel is not the result of improvisation, but of a careful selection of a young revolutionary with the potential to be promoted to higher positions. 

Speaking before the National Assembly of People's Power, the re-elected president, quoting Fidel, extolled the great achievement of the victory of unity at Playa Girón 62 years ago. "The triumph of the just over the unjust, of little David against giant Goliath, of a socialist revolution right under the nose of an empire." 

Upon beginning his second presidential term, Díaz-Canel faces a complex reality, in which the imperialist enemy continues its offensive to strangle the country, undermine its economic development, and prevent it from addressing social problems. He noted that, with the intensification of the blockade, the global crisis, and the country's difficulties, the economic and social situation has become more complex, "but if we review the dynamics of the last five years, we will see that in the worst circumstances and under the most criminal pressures, we became one of the few countries that survived the pandemic through our own efforts."

The new presidential term will continue the efforts of generations, since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, to build socialism, consolidate independence, and promote the social well-being of the population, aware of the enormous dangers emanating from US imperialism, whose government, like all previous ones, promotes policies aimed at destroying the socialist regime and the social achievements of the Cuban people.

Díaz-Canel enters his second presidential term benefiting from the experience accumulated by the Cuban people in confronting the blockade and numerous attempts at sabotage. He is aware of the value of unity, resistance, and the determination of the Cuban people to defend the socialist system, social achievements, national sovereignty, the right to self-determination, and the exercise of internationalist solidarity. 

This mandate will also be one of continuity because it is inspired and guided by the resolutions of the 8th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, which ratified the decision to make new and greater efforts and achieve new and greater victories in building a society led with the vision of a sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous, and sustainable nation. This, at the current stage, is embodied in the new conceptualization of the Socialist Economic and Social Development Model, in the plans to update the economic, social, and political model, without abandoning its socialist essence. This model recognizes the socialist ownership of the fundamental means of production by all the people as the main form of socioeconomic system, while simultaneously recognizing the diversification of different forms of ownership and management, and aiming to raise the level and quality of life of the people as a permanent priority objective, with emphasis on food and energy security, education, and health.

Alongside the fight against the external enemy, the Cuban people and government face the challenges of self-reform, filling gaps that require decisiveness, tenacity, method, rhythm, dialectical vision, and discipline. 

The tasks facing all state institutions, the government, social organizations, the Communist Party, and President Díaz-Canel are immense in planning, coordinating, and executing, in the short and long term, the tasks that will complete the process of updating and modernizing the Cuban economic model. Tasks that, without a doubt, the people will carry out in complete unity, under the aegis of the Revolution's program and its values.