 Girls walk along a street in Old Havana where a driver steers his classic American car in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. A legislative session on Wednesday will see a historic political transition, in which President Raul Castro plans to step down and hand over the office to a younger successor.... (Associated Press) 
 
 Girls walk along a street in Old Havana where a driver steers his classic American car in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. A legislative session on Wednesday will see a historic political transition,... (Associated Press) 
 
 HAVANA (AP) — Cuba's National Assembly will elect a new president on Wednesday and announce the replacement for Raul Castro the next day, an unusual two-day process that will install someone from outside the Castro family in the country's highest government office for the first time in nearly six decades. The 86-year-old Castro will remain head of the Communist Party, designated by the constitution as "the superior guiding force of society and the state." He has failed to fix the generally unproductive and highly subsidized state-run businesses that, along with a Soviet-model bureaucracy, employ three of every four Cubans. Communist Party newspaper Granma says the congress will assemble at 9 a.m. and select leaders of the legislature before voting for the president and other members of the Council of State, the country's highest government body. His brother Fidel was prime minister and president from 1959 until he fell ill in 2006. Although Osvaldo Dorticos was president of Cuba during Fidel Castro's time as prime minister, he was considered a figurehead next to the man who led Cuba's revolution, forged its single-party socialist system and ruled by fiat.
– The Cuban government on Wednesday selected 57-year-old First Vice President Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez as the sole candidate to succeed President Raul Castro in a transition aimed at ensuring that the country's single-party system outlasts the aging revolutionaries who created it. The certain approval of Diaz-Canel by members of the unfailingly unanimous National Assembly will install someone from outside the Castro family in the country's highest government office for the first time in nearly six decades, the AP reports. In what the AP initially called an "unusual two-day process," Diaz-Canel will officially take office Thursday; the new national leadership will be officially announced that day, the anniversary of the defeat of US-backed invaders at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. What to know: More on the process: The Cuban National Assembly has generally met and selected the president in one day. Its votes are nearly always anonymous and seen as reflecting the will of the country's top leadership. Cuba's constitution allows for any member of the 605-seat legislature to be elected as head of the council of state, but Diaz-Canel had long been seen as the overwhelming favorite. The new president will take over for the 86-year-old Castro, who is stepping down after two five-year terms. The Candidacy Commission also nominated another six vice presidents of the Council of State, Cuba's highest government body. The successor: Diaz-Canel gained prominence in central Villa Clara province as the top Communist Party official, a post equivalent to governor. There, people described him as a hard-working, modest-living technocrat dedicated to improving public services. He became higher education minister in 2009 before moving into the vice presidency. Most Cubans know their first vice president as an uncharismatic figure who until recently maintained a public profile so low it was virtually nonexistent.