Cuban Parliament Re-Elects Castro

Elected to a fifth term as president, Fidel Castro vowed socialism in Cuba will outlive him and denounced a U.S. aid proposal for the island.

Castro’s seven-hour speech to the opening of a new session of Parliament ended shortly after midnight Wednesday its marathon length reminiscent of his speeches in the early years after his 1959 revolution.

The 601-member Parliament, elected in January, opened its five-year term Tuesday by re-electing Castro and other top members of the Council of State, which works in conjunction with the Cabinet. Castro was the only presidential candidate, and all the deputies were elected unchallenged.

In his wide-ranging speech, Castro, 71, declared Cuba’s single-party communist system “untouchable” and said those who predict a “post-Castro transformation” are wrong.

“To suppose that the death of one individual could liquidate the work of a people … is really ridiculous,” Castro said. His remarks were relayed by reporters in Havana and by the Cuban government’s Prensa Latina news agency, monitored in Mexico City.

Castro also denounced a proposal before the U.S. Congress to distribute limited aid through U.S. charitable organizations as “humiliating.”