Havana Cuba. — Last Sunday the first round of the Cuban municipal elections was held. I give them that name because, despite the manipulations that the regime perpetrates in the nomination of the candidates, there are several to cover a single position. Therefore, each citizen chooses only one of the postulates, which is what “choose” comes to mean.
During previous weeks, various opposition movements and personalities, as well as independent journalists, urged our compatriots not to go to vote. In the case of those who could not join the withdrawal, the invitation was to cancel the ticket, preferably with slogans clearly directed against the socialist system.
Happily, the call worked, although not to the extent that would have been desirable. According to official data released by the National Electoral Council, throughout the country 68.59% of citizens authorized to do so turned out to vote. In other words, almost a third of Cubans over the age of 16 did not volunteer to participate in the mojiganga orchestrated by the regime. Under the conditions of a police-state like Cuba, the data is worth highlighting.
In Havana the results were better. According to Cuban newspaper, from an electoral roll of 1,677,456 people, 916,128 turned out to vote; that is, only 54.61%! But of those who did vote, approximately 12% voted blank or voided the ballot. This gives us an additional figure of about 110,000 citizens.
The latter did not act in accordance with the slogans launched from power, which exhorted not only to go to vote, but to do so “for the best”. So in the capital those who failed to comply with the communist “guidelines” represent slightly more than half of the electorate (approximately 51%)!
As a habanero, I feel satisfied with that achievement. But I think that the results less favorable to the democratic cause obtained within the Republic justify a question: Why? It is a true fact that our compatriots who do not reside in the capital are, by far, the most affected by the calamitous situation in our country; those who suffer to a greater degree blackouts, shortages, shortages.
My perception is that these millions of citizens do not know that anything else can be done. They have no idea of the possibilities offered by the simple expedient of not showing up at the polling station. That easy gesture is not even illegal, since in Cuba it is not compulsory to vote. If its use becomes general, it will send a powerful message of popular discontent with the catastrophe into which bureaucratic socialism has plunged the country. This will make it easier for the same single party to initiate the changes that our Homeland desperately needs.
The foregoing means that it is necessary to seek ways and means to disseminate more and better pro-democratic slogans. In this sense, the results of the referendum on the Family Code they are very instructive. As I highlighted in another article published in this same digital newspaper, in that consultation, throughout the country, only 46.6% of the electorate voted according to “what is oriented.”
It is true that, in that process, there was more time to spread the messages contrary to the communist monstrosity. It is also true that these adverse views came not only from pro-democracy fighters, but from civil society in general. Within this, different religious denominations stood out, which pointed out the innumerable deficiencies of the new law.
So it is necessary to work in that direction in view of the votes for deputies. These, according to established practice, will be held in a few months. In them, in a much greater proportion than in the municipal ones, the blatant bossiness of the communist authorities is revealed. The method established for this purpose in the current Electoral Law represents a true mockery of the will of the people, in whom —says the “Socialist Constitution”— sovereignty resides.
In this procedure, the “candidacy commissions” play a central role, a tricky monstrosity devised by the Castroites to perpetuate themselves in power. From time to time, some coarse of the regime insists that the minority single party does not participate in the conformation of these bodies. Nor does he need! If they are made up of representatives of the “mass organizations”, which, according to the Leninist confession, are simple “transmission belts” of that same party!
As a result of the work of these rogue commissions, the candidacies are formed, each of them composed of a number of deputies equal to the number that corresponds to each municipality or district. The citizen can vote for one or several of the postulates, or for all of them. If he doesn’t do it for any of them, his vote is declared void… A perfect trap! So we should not be surprised if there has never been a candidate for deputy who has not reached his seat!
With a view to these next national elections, it is convenient not only to give more dissemination to the ideas of withdrawal or the cancellation of the ballot. It also seems advisable to improve the independent monitoring of the process, which several internal opposition organizations tried to carry out last Sunday, with little success.
In this regard, I encourage myself to suggest another form of monitoring, different and —I think— easier than the ones used on Sunday, which were interfered with by the repression of the “insurers”. The independent press has documented the harassment deployed in this regard by the political police, who detained the activists in their homes or expelled them (through the electoral authorities, supposedly “neutral”) from the places where they monitored the progress of the vote.
This is a method that decades ago, during another electoral process, was applied by the Assembly to Promote Civil Society. This consists of taking the data (it can be a photo) of the model that each polling station is obliged to place on the outskirts of its premises as a means of informing the citizens attached to it of the results.
It can be assumed that these data are in line with reality. Adulterating them would imply an obvious risk: that the mystification is known not only by the members of the electoral college, but also by the citizens who attend the scrutinies. It would be an additional loss of prestige that, up to now, the Castroites have not wanted to run.
OPINION ARTICLE
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