President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers of Cuba, Mr Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, and his wife, together with an official delegation, will pay a state visit to Laos from November 10-11.
The two-day visit by Mr Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez is in response to an invitation from President Bounnhang Vorachit, according to an announcement from the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Cuban politician and member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), Mr Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez was born on April 20, 1960, in the city of Placetas in Villa Clara, Cuba.
He graduated in electronic engineering in 1982 from the Central University of Las Villas, Marta Abreu and began his professional career as an officer with the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), where he remained until 1985. In April of that year, he became a professor at the Marta Abreu University. In 1987 in that centre he became a cadre of the Union of Young Communists (UJC), without departing from his commitment to teaching.
He fulfilled an internationalist mission in Nicaragua and, on his return, in 1989, he occupied different functions in this youth organisation until becoming First Secretary of the provincial Committee of the UJC in Villa Clara and then Second Secretary of the National Committee of the UJC. In 1993 he began his work as a cadre of the PCC and a year later he was elected First Secretary of the Provincial Committee in the territory of Villa Clara. In 2003 he was elected to the same position in the province of Holguin. In that same year, he became a member of the Political Bureau of the PCC.
After accumulating remarkable results as the head of the Party in Holguin, he was promoted in May 2009 to the position of Minister of Higher Education, from which he promoted a series of transformations in the Cuban higher education system.
On March 27, 2012, he assumed a new position as vice-president of the Council of Ministers, being in charge of the attention of different organisations linked to education, science, sports and culture.
On February 21, 2013, upon the establishment of the VIII Legislature of the National Assembly of People’s Power, Diaz-Canel was elected first Vice President of the Councils of State and of Ministers.
He was elected president of the Councils of State and of Ministers of the Republic of Cuba in the IX Legislature of the National Assembly of People’s Power, held on April 18, 2018, at the Havana Convention Centre. He obtained 603 votes out of 604 possible, equivalent to 99.83 percent.
According to the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cuba has diplomatic or consular relations with 187 States. It has 148 diplomatic representations in 120 countries: 119 embassies, 1 Interests Section, 21 Consulates, 3 Diplomatic Offices, and 4 permanent representations to international organisations.
Cuba established diplomatic relations with Laos on November 4, 1974, and the Embassy of Cuba is located in Vientiane. Since then, the two countries have been helping and supporting each other and contributed to enhancing the cooperation between the two parties, governments and people.
In the field of education, the Cuban government has provided new scholarships for six Lao nationals to study at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana - an institution of international prestige - and in other universities, in the specialties of Law and Philology in Spanish Language, for the academic year 2018-2019.
Cuba has granted several hundred scholarships to Lao nationals over many years and about 145 have graduated from Cuban universities. They took degrees in Medicine, Law, Economics, Sports, Engineering, Architecture, Veterinary Science, and Spanish Language, amongst other specialties. (Vientiane Times)