Cuba. Why does the enemy lie about the elections?

With Michel E Torres Corona. Latin America Summary, 27 November 2022.

A counter-revolutionary psychic whose name I do not want to remember circulated on digital networks in different formats. Alleged “facts” about the elections in Cuba. Almost tomorrow at the call gate to the polls, these communication products in a very good format (the bad guys have a lot of money to pay for the camera, editing, design, graphics, etc.) The goal of sabotaging this democratic practice, which contradicts the thesis of “brutal dictatorship”.

Their first implication is that in Cuba there is no power of choice, only power of approval. When they are curious, they try to introduce this matrix of ideas. municipal elections are a unique example of democracy in the world: citizens nominate and elect candidates and delegates, respectively, in a ballot in which one of several persons is elected as a representative, without any interference from State officials or Party leaders.

In the case of National Assembly deputies, it’s true that nomination committees prepare a ballot where the popular choice emerges with (or not) majority approval. But this means that every person sitting in the House, including the President, is supported by more than half of the electorate who voted. Where is the overwhelming majority against PCC members?

If the revolution has lost its hegemony and socialism is a failure, why is it so difficult for its enemies to win an election, even a municipal election? Because they asked for it many times and failed. If there is an organized movement against the system that has a really serious political program among all these difficulties and shortcomings, it should not be difficult to get the majority of seats in municipal councils across the country.

But let’s not be so demanding: why doesn’t it win a majority even in the city council? To be even more condescending: Why haven’t you managed, all these years, to get a group of neighbors to nominate and vote for a single candidate against the system? The counter-revolutionary milieu charged with attacking the legitimacy of the Cuban electoral system immediately resorted to ghost stories: Security watches everything, there are kidnappings, disappearances; Regime forces are everywhere. And what begins with a supposedly legal analysis ends with delusions of persecution and propaganda trickery.

Of course, this is not being said by the counter-revolutionary circle, there are things that need improvement. Our political system should give you greater weight to the City Council over constitutional authority the autonomy of the municipalities and the fact that no elected delegate should wear himself out in the face of the demands of his voters without solving the problems of his own community.. Information about the elections should circulate not only through traditional and analogue channels, but also with the greater use of the Internet and the advantages of technologies.

Cuban democracy, however flawed, is still democracy, a different and appropriate form of this political value.. The design of the electoral system, and of the political system in general, is supported by the Constitution, which was not imposed at will or the product of a conspiracy, but was constructed through broad popular consultation and approved in a referendum. That all inhabitants of the island can cast their vote freely and secretly. And the counter-revolution was there, calling No and abstaining as they do today and will continue to do as long as democracy does not benefit them.

Source: Cubadebate