2006–2008 Cuban transfer of presidential duties
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The 2006–2008 Cuban transfer of presidential duties was the transfer of the title of president and presidential duties from longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro to his brother, First Vice President Raúl Castro, the next-in-line-of-succession person in Cuba, following Fidel's operation and recovery from an undisclosed digestive illness believed to be diverticulitis. Although Raúl Castro exercised the duties of president, Fidel Castro retained the title of president of the Council of State of Cuba and president of the Council of Ministers of Cuba, during this period.
Fidel had been in power since Cuban Revolution and held the title of prime minister of Cuba since 1959. At the time of his operation in July 2006, he was nearly 80 years old and the last governing communist leader from the Cold War era. Fidel felt proud to have not only thwarted the Bay of Pigs Invasion, CIA attempts to assassinate him, and acts of Cuban exile violence, but also to have outlived the Cold War and the USSR. For years, he had exhorted the Cuban people to brave the crippling effects of the U.S. embargo against Cuba (largely to whip up patriotic fury against the U.S.) and the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. While the radical left (especially Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales) praised Castro as a tireless defender of the poor and oppressed in Latin America and Africa while standing up to U.S. hegemony in the Americas, Fidel Castro's sworn enemies, namely the U.S. and Cuban-Americans, saw him as a ruthless tyrant who broke his promise to restore democracy to Cuba by imposing a repressive communist government on the island that muzzled all opposition and wrecked the Cuban economy.
On February 19, 2008, Fidel announced that he would not stand for re-election as president at the next meeting of the National Assembly of People's Power. Raúl was elected president by the National Assembly on February 24, 2008. Fidel Castro remained the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba until 2011.