Cuba's National Assembly is expected to name Fidel Castro's successor today marking the end of the iconic revolutionary's 49-year rule.
It is widely expected that his brother Raul Castro, who has been running Cuba since the 81-year-old leader was sidelined by illness 19 months ago, will become the next president.
The 614-member legislature met at 10 am (3 pm Irish time). An announcement on composition of the Council of State, the island's highest executive body, is expected later this afternoon.
Fidel Castro has not appeared in public since undergoing intestinal surgery in July 2006.
He will retain significant but potentially waning influence as first secretary of the ruling Communist Party.
Castro announced his retirement as president last Tuesday, almost half a century after he ousted a US-backed dictator in an armed revolution and began to create a persona that would turn him into an icon of the left, a perpetual thorn in Washington's side and a tyrant to his foes.
He said he was too weakened by his undisclosed illness to continue governing but would soldier on in the "battle of ideas" by writing articles.
Anti-Castro exiles and US President George W. Bush have led calls for democratic reform on the island.
An army general who has lived in the shadow of his more famous and charismatic brother, Raul Castro is considered a manager more concerned with putting food on Cuban tables than waging an ideological war against the United States.
As acting president, Raul Castro has fostered debate on the failings of Cuba's state-run economy and raised expectations that reform may be coming. In December he stated that Cuba has "excessive prohibitions."
But so far he has delivered little other than relaxing customs rules for appliances and car parts that are much in demand, and desperately short in supply, in Cuba.
Many Cubans hope they will soon be allowed to freely buy and sell their homes, travel abroad and stay at hotels and beaches where only foreigners can now set foot.
Last year, Raul Castro extended an olive branch to the United States, saying he was open to talks but only after President George W. Bush, who tightened economic sanctions and travel restrictions to Cuba, leaves office.
Bush administration officials rejected the offer, calling Raul Castro "Fidel Lite" and denouncing what they see as the handing of power from one dictator to another.