“Neighbors, vote!” a woman yelled insistently this Sunday morning at the door of a building in the neighborhood of Key West, in Central Havana. A few meters away, in one of the premises where the municipal elections of the People’s Power in Cuba are being held on November 27, only those who work at the tables and two pioneers who guarded the ballot boxes were visible.
The polling stations opened from 7:00 in the morning, to kick off an electoral cycle that will culminate in 2023 with a new legislature in Parliament. The elections, which take place in the midst of a deep economic crisis and a massive exodus, have been marked by citizen apathy and an intense campaign by activists who promote abstention.
Some eight million Cubans over the age of 16 are called to the polls in 23,480 polling stations in 12,427 constituencies and to choose among 26,746 candidates, according to data from the National Electoral Council (CEN). Of them, 70% belong to the Communist Party or its youth, while 44% are women and only 7% are young. The number of voters can vary significantly since in the last year at least 224,000 Cubans have reached the southern border of the United States.
Cubans abroad cannot vote in these elections, as established by the Electoral Law and within the Island the authorities have not managed to excite the population, totally focused on overcoming daily difficulties such as shortages, long blackouts and lack of transportation .
The indifference with which many have welcomed these elections has been noticeable since the early hours of this Sunday morning in various parts of the Cuban capital. On a tour made by 14ymedio In the municipalities of Centro Habana, Plaza de la Revolución, Cerro and part of Diez de Octubre, the scene of empty schools or with very little attendance was repeated.
“I’m going to go because I don’t want to mark myself, but I will annul the ticket,” an employee of the Unión Eléctrica de Cuba (UNE), resident in the vicinity of Ayestarán street and who preferred to remain anonymous, told this newspaper. “In my house we are four with the right to vote and we are all going to do the same,” she assured.
“In my neighborhood everyone knows that the delegate cannot solve any problem. We have spent many years raising in meetings that they have to fix a huge pothole that we have on the block and they have not even been able to do that,” laments the UNE employee. .
Others see abstention as a way to send a message of dissatisfaction to the regime. The activist Boris González is one of those who has promoted the campaign for #YoNoVoto. “By not voting, I vote. I vote because Cubans do not leave the country,” the independent journalist also wrote on his Facebook account. “I vote for Cuba to be a promoter of democracy and the most efficient testimony of the inhumanity of communism,” he added.
Abstention in the Cuban elections has been growing steadily in recent years, an unusual phenomenon in a country where participation in elections is promoted as an endorsement of the political model and the leadership of the single party. In the votes for the new Constitution, it reached 15.6% and, more recently, in the referendum with which the Family Code was approved, it reached 25.88%.
Several analysts agree that the current elections may exceed 30% abstention due to the emigration of thousands of voters, the indifference of many more towards the mechanisms of Popular Power and the desire to punish the Cuban Government for its clumsy management of the crisis. economy, inflation and monetary devaluation that has sunk the purchasing power of families.
There have also been complaints about the affiliation of some of the delegate candidates. Pedro López, family of political prisoner Andy García, sentenced for demonstrating on July 11, 2021, warned that in the José Martí Popular Council of Santa Clara, “the repressor Leandro, the person in charge” of monitoring his family is one of names appearing on the ballot.
“On Friday the chicken arrived in my neighborhood,” Moraima, a retiree residing in the neighborhood of La Timba in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución, explains to this newspaper. Nothing had arrived at the butcher shop for weeks. [del mercado racionado] and what a coincidence that the chicken appeared just before these elections,” he laments.
In the state kitchens that provide subsidized food to retirees and other vulnerable people, the menu also improved significantly this week, as confirmed by this newspaper. In several of these places, lunches that included chicken, mincemeat or sausage were sold, after months in which the only protein they offered on some occasions was egg.
Along with the improvement in food supplies, the authorities also urged their followers to reinforce “the ideological work block by block and motivate voters to go to the polls,” according to testimonies compiled by this newspaper from various communist and military militants. veterans from the neighborhood of Nuevo Vedado.
“Since dawn I’ve been knocking on doors because no one can stay without voting,” said a retiree who, near Rancho Boyeros avenue, took on the task of summoning the residents to the electoral college located in the lower part of a block of buildings. For the old man, insisting on the most delinquent voters is vital: “If he’s asleep, I’ll wake him up, but here we’re not going to make the Revolution ugly with low attendance.”
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