FIRST Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) Raul Castro announced Friday he is retiring as the head of the party.

“As for me, my task as first secretary of the Central Committee of the Party concludes, with the satisfaction of having fulfilled [my mission] and confidence in the future of the country,” Castro said after presenting the key report on the opening day of the PCC’s 8th Congress.

Castro said he declined “a proposal to remain in the higher organs of the party organization, in whose ranks I will continue to be a revolutionary combatant.”

The 89-year-old leader said: “As long as I live I will be ready with my foot on the stirrup to defend the homeland, the revolution and socialism with more strength than ever.”

Castro expressed confidence in the new leaders of the party, and his satisfaction in handing over the reins to a well-prepared group of people committed to ethics, cultural values and the nation.

Castro’s retirement takes effect today, the last day of the Congress, when the party’s new leadership will be elected.

He was elected to the top position of the PCC in April 2011 at the PCC’s 6th Congress, succeeding his older brother and late president Fidel Castro, who had held that position since the founding of the party in 1965.

Castro didn’t say who he would endorse as his successor as first secretary of the Communist Party. But he previously indicated he favors yielding control to 60-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel, who succeeded him as president in 2018 and has been pushing an economic opening.

Castro’s retirement ends an era of formal leadership that began with his brother Fidel and country’s 1959 revolution.

Fidel Castro, who led the revolution that drove dictator Fulgencio Batista from power in 1959, formally became head of the party in 1965.

Raul succeeded him as head of the party in 2011. Fidel Castro died in 2016.

For most of his life, Raul played second-fiddle to his brother Fidel — first as a guerrilla commander, later as a senior figure in their socialist government. But for the past decade, it’s Raul who has been the face of Cuba.

It was Raul who reached accords with U.S. President Barack Obama in 2014 that created the most extensive U.S. opening to Cuba since the early 1960s — creating a surge in contacts with the United States that was largely reversed under Obama’s successor, Donald Trump. (SD-Xinhua)