Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel re-elected by lawmakers

FILE PHOTO: A vintage car passes by an image of Cuba's former President Raul Castro and Cuba's President and First Secretary of the Communist Party Miguel Diaz-Canel beside a sign that reads: "We are continuity", in Havana, Cuba, April 17, 2023. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

HAVANA (Reuters) -Cuban lawmakers on Wednesday easily re-elected Miguel Diaz-Canel as president for a second term as the country faces one of the biggest social and economic crisis since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.

Diaz-Canel, leader of the Communist Party - the country's only recognized political movement - won a landslide vote of 97.66% of the National Assembly, all of whose 470 members are aligned with the party or sympathetic to it.