Fidel Castro votes in general elections

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro speaks to reporters at a polling station in Havana, Feb 3, 2013. [Photo/Agencies]

HAVANA - Cuban former president Fidel Castro voted at the general elections held Sunday to decide the members of the national parliament and those of provincial assemblies, the official media reported Sunday.

According to the official NNTV news, Castro, 86, cast his vote in the afternoon at the NO 1 polling station of the 13th constituency at the Plaza municipality, where he has always voted since 1976 when the first general elections were held after the triumph of the revolution in 1959.

Fidel Castro served Cuba as president for 48 years, staying in power beyond ten US presidential administrations, hundreds of assassination attempts against him, the invasion of Bay of Pigs, a six-year civil guerrillas war in the mountains and the collapse of the East-Europe communist bloc, which triggered a serious economic crisis in the island country.

He transferred responsibilities to his brother Raul Castro, the current Cuban president, in July 2006, when an intestinal surgery put his life in serious danger and forced him to rest.

Since then he devoted his time to writing editorials on important international affairs and published two volumes of memoirs of his guerrilla war experience at the Sierra Maestra Mountains.

Although his health condition is a frequent topic of the international media, and he resigned to all his political and government duties because of disease, Fidel Castro said in 2008 that he would attend the general elections of that year and the following ones "because a revolutionary never retires".

Over 8.5 million Cuban were expected Sunday to vote for 612 members of the national parliament and 1269 delegates of the 15 provincial assemblies.