MIAMI, United States. — This Sunday will take place in Cuba the “elections” of deputies to the National Assembly of Popular Powerwhose candidacies have already been defined, and not precisely by the citizens.
Basically, Cubans will go to the polls to vote for the 470 legislators who will supposedly represent them for the next five years in Parliament, an entity that only meets twice a year.
There are 470 seats and 470 candidates, so the voters will not elect anyone, but will ratify the decision of the regime’s top brass, imposed against the current of the interests of the people, a demonstrable fact from the moment they are excluded from the citizen candidacies with political positions contrary to the dictatorship.
In order to impose its candidates, the island’s regime manages the nominations at will. In this sense, it is common for a senior official based in the Havana municipality of Playa to end up representing any municipality in the Cuban geography, even if no one knows him there.
Castroism of continuity boasts of carrying out a democratic exercise endorsed by holding assemblies in the 168 municipalities of the country with the assistance of district delegates who were previously proposed and directly elected by the population in the communities.
According to him National Electoral Council (CEN) —an entity controlled by the dictatorship—, among the nominees, 20% are young people under 35 years of age and 53% are women. The average age of the deputies is 46 years and more than 95 percent are university graduates.
In Sunday’s “elections” more than eight million Cubans are called to the polls to vote, 1.5 million of them live in Havana.
In order to be ratified, the deputies must have the support of more than 50% of the votes cast, while the regime has several legal resources to fill those positions that may become vacant.
All the candidates were selected by the so-called mass organizations and approved for the Municipal Assemblies of People’s Power, where the militants of the PCC and the Union of Young Communists (UJC) are the majority.
