MIAMI, United States. – The Cuban regime announced this thursday through its official means the holding of general elections to elect the deputies of the National Assembly of People’s Power on March 26, 2023.
Once the new Parliament is constituted, the deputies will propose and vote on the main political positions in the country, including that of President of the Republic and to which the current ruler, Miguel Díaz-Canel, can aspire for another five years.
The general elections are the last step in a cycle that began on November 27 with the first round of the elections for municipal delegates and that broke abstentionism records on the island.
Of the 8.3 million Cubans who had to vote, only 68.58% participated in the elections, for an abstention of 31.42%.
On the occasion of the municipal “elections”, the Archipelago platform recalled that the Cuban electoral model is designed so that the single party and its institutions retain absolute control over the destiny of the country.
For this reason, the civic organization pointed out that boycotting the “elections” could be “a magnificent opportunity to say loudly before the regime and before the international community, that the dictatorship no longer has the majorities it boasted for decades.”
Havana does not allow independent international observers to attend the voting sessions, which are presented by the government as “a genuine exercise in democracy.”
However, the Cuban electoral model has been widely criticized on the island and the rest of the world for its lack of democracy and transparency, for its selectivity, and for the exclusion of opposition candidates.
“Here there are no elections, that is already chosen. There is no democracy, here in Cuba democracy was lost years ago. The presidents are put by them, not the people who are the ones who are pulling a tremendous rope here,” denounced a Cuban in conversation with CubaNetfollowing the 2019 elections.
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