CDMX, Mexico.- Granma announced in its edition on January 13 the assemblies for the nomination of candidates for deputies to the National Assembly of People’s Power, for February 8 and 9 throughout the national territory. This mock nomination offers unique candidates for each deputy position, pre-selected by the nomination commissions. These, like the Soviet ones, are created, financed and controlled by the single party. Although the official propaganda, echoed by the international press, says that the Cuban single party does not run, all the pre-candidates for deputies are directly controlled by the leadership of the single party through their “mass organizations,” organizations imposed They do not represent the interests of the citizenry.
The only novelty is that the number of deputies is reduced from 605 to 470. However, the public is not informed in what way parliamentary work with 135 fewer deputies may or may not be affected. Homero Acosta, secretary of Parliament, said last December that they had changed the ratio of representatives per number of inhabitants, a decision not consulted with the public.
He says Granma that the biographies of the candidates will be posted at eight access points in each constituency and the vice president of the National Electoral Council, Tomás Amarán Díaz, announces that his representatives will go house to house to persuade voters to vote for each shortlisted candidate and to update the electoral roll. Through this mechanism of “persuasion” to vote for pre-selected candidates, the dictatorship violates the constitutional right to free, secret and direct vote, and it is an unconstitutional action.
Electoral council, does it violate the rights of the electoral law?
By electoral law, voting is voluntary, therefore encouraging the vote house to house is a violation of citizen rights, it is an act of intimidation against their rights. In addition, going house to house to defend the proposed candidates is to campaign for an election. Prohibited by law, citizens cannot campaign, much less public officials, such as the Electoral Council delegates. If an Independent Constitutional Court existed in Cuba, these actions of the National Electoral Council would already be annulled.
It is necessary to point out that the next elections for deputies would be the second since 1959. The exercise of voting for deputies began in 2018 and the testimonies of citizens and opponents showed that after the arrests and intimidation of independent candidates, the State Security prevented the election of independent candidates other than those approved by the party. The “OTRO18” Movement of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUAD), led by the opposition Manuel Cuesta Morúa, told the independent Cuban press that this movement had more than a hundred activists ready to present themselves as independent candidates in the elections of the 2018, however, with the current electoral system and the violation of its own articles, it is impossible for independent candidates to the party to be nominated.
The Cuban mass media, hijacked by the single party, also violate the constitutional right to free and voluntary vote, because before each election the media unleash an overwhelming “political campaign” to validate fraudulent elections that do not allow electing the political representatives of the country.
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