CDMX, Mexico. –Today the Cuban government celebrates the elections of delegates to the Municipal Assemblies of People’s Power. The forecast is that 8 million citizens go to the polls. With these votes begins the electoral cycle that will end with the renewal of Parliament and the election (or re-election) of the President of the Republic.
Cubanet summarizes three ideas that you should know about today’s “elections”.
are illegitimate
The Electoral Transparency observatory that has studied the Cuban election system has declared these elections illegitimate and these are the reasons:
1. The electoral system is designed so that the Communist Party (PCC) controls the entire process and prevents free participation.
According to the official figures, 70 percent of the candidates who will be voted for today belong to the PCC (the only legal party in Cuba).
2. In theory, at the municipal level anyone can apply. However, the nomination assemblies, from which the candidates for municipal delegates result, are held by a show of hands to hinder opposition candidacies.
For this day, the opposition platform “Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba” confirmed that only one of its seven candidates to run in the process was nominated to be voted on. While three who were not allowed to perform.
This, of course, is not a new practice. In 2018 the opponent José Díaz Silva was arrested when leaving his house to prevent his participation in the nomination of deputies. Three women activists tried to run as candidates and they were not allowed: María Elena Mir, Elsa Litsy Isaac and Susleydis Pérez Velázquez.
To date no opposition candidate has been elected.
3. Cubans can vote, but not choose, since only the candidates selected by the PCC are on the ballot. The omnipotent god that allows or not everything in Cuba.
Criminalize independent observation
Several Cuban activists who intended to exercise electoral observation were prevented from reaching the schools.
This morning, the house of Marthadela Tamayo and Osvaldo Navarro woke up under siege. The political police warned them not to dare to go out. The scrutiny was prohibited. The activist María Mercedes Benítez also denounced a similar situation. Yesterday Benítez was arrested in the morning when she was going through some celectoral elections. They released her almost four hours later.
Cuba is in the last place of the Electoral Observation Index for Latin America of Electoral Transparency, in the category of failed electoral observation.
Low citizen participation
Starting at seven in the morning, the 23,480 polling stations enabled throughout the country opened. However, by 11 o’clock, barely 19% of the voters had voted. This figure is 10 points below that reported at the same time in the 2017 elections.
A report of the EFE agency This is how he describes the panorama that they observed today when touring the schools:
“When the polling stations opened in Cuba for the municipal elections this Sunday, there was a longer line at a bakery than at the polling station in the capital, which was located a few meters from there.”
For these elections, the opposition has called not to vote as a sign that the political system is not supported.
