Cuba will elect a new president on Thursday, marking the end of an era, as 86-year-old Raul Castro hands over power to the Caribbean island's first non-Castro president in six decades.
Current Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, 57, is widely expected to be the successor, who will be picked by parliament.
His election will represent a takeover by younger leaders, replacing the bearded guerrillas led by Raul Castro's brother Fidel, who overthrew the corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista in the 1959 revolution.
Raul Castro took over provisionally when his brother's health deteriorated in 2006, then officially became president in 2008. Fidel died eight years later at age 90.
Cubans have shown little interest in the new president, blogger Yoani Sanchez wrote, describing the election as "a process organised to make sure that nothing will change."
Younger politicians who could play key roles in the incoming administration include former economy and planning minister Marino Murillo, Health Minister Roberto Morales and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.
"Unlike his predecessors, whose power was justified by their revolutionary pedigree, Diaz-Canel will have to generate his own legitimacy largely through performance," Cuba expert Marguerite Jimenez wrote in the US magazine Foreign Affairs.
The new president will face major challenges, including that of reviving the economy, which shrank by 0.9 per cent in 2016 and only grew by 1.6 per cent last year.
A deepening economic crisis in Cuba's ally Venezuela has squeezed its finances at a time when US President Donald Trump has stepped up economic pressure on the island, tightening business and travel restrictions following a thaw under Barack Obama.
The private sector, which has been fuelled by a boom in tourism - with 4.5 million visitors recorded in 2017 - already employs more than a third of the workforce.
Cuba's new leaders will also face the question of freedom of expression, which remains highly limited, to the extent that many people refuse to discuss politics in public.
