MADRID, Spain.- The “elections” of delegates to the Municipal Assemblies of People’s Power, held this Sunday in Cuba, were marked by popular rejection and a probable record of abstentions.
Until 5:00 in the afternoon of this November 27, time of the last official reportonly 63.85% of the eight million voters called had attended the polls.
According to the EFE agency, this figure “is 18.2 points below the lowest data recorded since these elections began in 1976, and is more similar to the abstentionism registered (26%) in the referendum on the Family Code held in September past”.
The municipal polls were supposed to close at 6:00 p.m., but in several polling stations they remained open at 7:00 p.m. due to a sudden decision of the National Electoral Council.
“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,” he said. EFE.
Among the reasons for the high number of abstentions are the weariness of a large part of the population after two years of serious economic and energy crisis; and the calls from sectors of the opposition, inside and outside the Island, not to attend the polls, which have insisted on what illegitimate of the Cuban electoral system, designed so that the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) controls the entire process and prevents free participation.
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.
It is worth remembering that the Cuban electoral law does not allow independent observation of the vote count, of activists or organizations independent of the single party at any level, so the representatives of the regime are free to produce fraud in the vote count. votes, making this a totally illegitimate system.
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