Havana, 20 April 2023 (dpa/MIA) - Cuban lawmakers elected President Miguel Díaz-Canel to a second five-year term on Wednesday, handing him 459 of 460 votes in the National Assembly, the official Communist Party newspaper Granma reported.

Vice President Salvador Valdés Mesa was also re-elected.

In 2018, the 62-year-old Díaz-Canel succeeded the brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro, making him the first non-Castro ruler of the one-party Caribbean island state since the revolution in 1959.

Díaz-Canel had replaced the now 91-year-old Raúl Castro, who in turn had come to power as his older brother Fidel's health declined in 2008. Fidel, who had ruled Cuba for nearly five decades, died in 2016.

In 2021, Díaz-Canel also took on the powerful role of first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party - the only political party permitted in the country.

Under Cuba's current constitution, which came into force in 2019, a president cannot serve more than two terms in a row, meaning Díaz-Canel can stay in power until 2028.

The National Assembly, Cuba's only legislative body, was elected in March. The candidates had been approved in advance by electoral commissions.

The National Assembly elects the country's president and vice president from within its ranks.

Diaz-Canel's election in 2018 was seen a generational shift to younger Communist leaders, replacing an old guard led by Fidel, who overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista in the 1959 revolution.

Photo: EPA