On March 26, 2023, 6,164,876 Cubans
citizens went to the 23,468 voting places to cast their vote for or against 470
candidates for deputies to the National Assembly of People’s Power, which is
the highest political authority in the nation, possessing the constitutional
authority to elect and recall the President of the Republic and the cabinet
ministers recommended to it by the President.
Some 75.92% of the registered voters cast their ballots. Of the ballots cast, 90.28% were declared
valid, with 6.22% left blank and 3.50% declared invalid for having written
something on the ballot. These results
are a victory over the international campaign calling upon Cubans to boycott
the elections.
The results were announced on March 27 by
Alina Balseiro Gutiérrez, President of the Electoral National Council. She pointed out that the participation rate
was higher than the November 27 elections for the delegates of the 169
municipal assemblies of the nation, in which 68.56% of the voters cast ballots;
and higher than the referendum on the on the Family Code, which had a
participation rate of 74.12%. (See “Cuba approves new family code,” October 4, 2022; “Cuba elects delegates to people’s assemblies,” December 2, 2022).
Alina Balseiro Gutiérrez, President of the Electoral National Council, announces the results
The Associated Press stresses that the
75.9% voter turnout is far lower than the 94.2% turnout of 2013. However, AP does not mention that in 2013 the
country was in the midst of formulating a new social and economic model, in
which there was some disagreement, such that there was much at stake in the
voting for deputies to the National Assembly.
Now, however, the context is completely different. As a consequence of the intensification of
the blockade by the Trump and Biden administrations and the collapse of tourism
due to the pandemic, the country is in a serious economic crisis, characterized
by inflation, periodic electricity blackouts, shortages of goods, and long
lines. The government has put forth and
is implementing a well-conceived plan for addressing the economic problems, and
no alternative plan has been put forth or is feasible. Thus, the direction of the Cuban national
project in the face of the economic problems, which have been primarily caused
by international developments, is established and clear. Accordingly, the fact is that the conditions
of Cuban daily life in the next few years will be shaped more by international
events than by which particular leaders are elected to serve as deputies on the
National Assembly.
Therefore, for Cuban citizens at the
present time, the primary reason for voting is to affirm the direction taken by
the government, and the 75.9% voter turnout is one of the highest in the
world. The fact that voter turnout would
be high in the midst of an economic crisis is one indication among many that
the government of Cuba enjoys a high level of legitimation among the Cuban
people.
The elections for deputies to the National
Assembly is actually the second round of elections of this five-year election
cycle. In this round, each ballot lists
the names of generally two to six candidates that had been nominated by the
elected delegates of the particular municipal assembly. The voters could mark a single X for all, or
they could select from those candidates for whom they wish to vote. Balseiro Gutiérrez reported that 72.10% of
the valid ballots marked the X for all, and 27.90% selected candidates from the
list. All of the candidates nominated by
the 168 municipal assemblies were elected to the National Assembly, having
received more than half of the votes cast.
For much of the electoral campaign, the
Cuban government and the media were calling upon the people to vote. However, in the days prior to election day,
the leaders put forth the notion that to vote for all the candidates on your
ballot is the revolutionary thing to do.
The fact that 28% of the voters ignored this call reflects a plurality
that has emerged within the revolutionary project. In recent years, with the emergence of the
new social and economic model, there has emerged some disagreement concerning
such questions as the degree of expansion of private enterprises in the economy
and what the specific economic measures ought to be. Subsequently, there has been debate of the
family code, with the question of gay marriage especially being a source of
disagreement. Even though a
constitutional and legal consensus has been attained with respect to these
economic and cultural questions, it is safe to say that some of the candidates
were associated with one side or another in these debates, and some voters were
inclined to not support the candidates with whom they had disagreements
concerning what the voter considered to be an important question. Although reflecting a pluralism within the
revolution, the 28% were expressing support for the revolutionary project by
voting and by supporting other candidates on the ballot. The disagreements concern particular laws and
courses of action, expressing themselves in a context of support for the
revolutionary project.
The newly elected National Assembly
convenes on April 19, with 63% of the deputies reelected from the previous
legislature. Some 55% of the 470
deputies are women, and 45% are blacks and mulattoes. The average age of the deputies is 46 years,
with 20% being less than 35 years of age.
Some 95% are college graduates.
All sectors of the society are represented, including production,
service, the press, education, health, science, culture, sport, students,
religion, the military, and owners of small-scale private enterprises.
Balseiro Gutiérrez pointed out that the
elections were carried out with total tranquility and normalcy, without incidents
of any kind. She stressed that they
were carried out under public scrutiny, with mass media present.
 |
| President Díaz-Canel and seven other Santa Clara candidates on the campaign trail |
Are there
elections in Cuba?
I first traveled to Cuba in 1993,
participating in an academic interchange with the Latin American Faculty for
the Social Sciences (FLACSO) of the University of Havana, organized by the
Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association, of which I was a
somewhat active member, although a little unorthodox in my Marxist
thinking. During said interchange, I was
absolutely shocked to learn that there are elections in Cuba. Upon hearing what I thought was reference to
elections, I haltingly asked, “Do you mean to say that there are elections in
Cuba?” And when it was explained that indeed there are, and when it was further
noted that the Communist Party of Cuba does not participate in the elections, I
even more haltingly asked, “Then what does the Communist Party do?”
I immediately had questions about these
elections. Who is eligible to vote? Who is eligible to run for office? Must one be a member of the Party to hold
office? What authority or power do those
elected have? It took me a couple of
years to track down the answers to these questions, satisfying myself that I
had empirically reliable confirmation of the answers to which I had
arrived. I thus arrived to the
conclusion that Cuba has a political process that any reasonable person would
call democratic, with structures different from, and in key respects superior
to, those of representative democracy.
Sometime around 1998 I published an article in a couple of places on the
Internet, entitled “The myth of Cuban dictatorship.”
The discovery of the myth led me to raise
questions concerning how it was possible that a lie could be so widely
disseminated. Carefully observing
discourses coming out of Miami, I arrived to understand the structure of the
widely disseminated lie. It involves,
first, the identification of facts that in and of themselves are true, but
isolated from other facts that constitute their context, they by themselves
provide a false understanding. Secondly,
the constant repetition of the true but taken by themselves misleading facts.
In the case of the myth of the Cuban
dictatorship, the two constantly repeated facts were, first, that Fidel had
been the head of state for many years, and secondly, Cuba does not hold
elections involving two or more competing political parties. Taken by themselves, these two facts imply a
political process that is authoritarian or totalitarian and undemocratic. But when they are presented with a whole host
of other relevant facts with respect to the Cuban political process, a
completely different picture emerges.
Let us look at the more complete
picture. Cuban territory is divided into
12,427 voting districts. In anticipation
of elections for 169 municipal assemblies in the nation, which are held every
five years, three or four neighborhood nomination assemblies are held in each
voting district. At said assemblies, any
citizen can put forth the name of a person for election as a delegate to the
municipal assembly. Any citizen present
has the right to speak of the strengths and limitations of the persons who
names are put forward. The suggested
names are then put to a vote through a show of hands. The electoral commission of the voting
district is informed of the results of the nomination assemblies, and on the
basis of the results, the electoral commission formally declares the candidates
for delegate from the district to the municipal assembly. By law, there must be at least two and no
more than six candidates; generally, there are two or three.
The two or three candidates do not make
campaign promises, and they do not conduct campaigns. Their names with a brief biography are posted
side-by-side in prominent public places in the district. They are nominated and elected on the basis
of their achievements in their professions or fields of employment or study, or
because of their contributions to the local community and/or the nation. If no candidate receives a majority of the
votes, a runoff election is held.
Once constituted, the 169 municipal
assemblies elect candidates for deputies of the National Assembly of People’s
Power. They are assisted in this task
through recommendations made by candidacy commissions formed by representatives
of the mass organizations: the Workers’ Federation of Cuba, the Committees for
the Defense of the Revolution (a nationwide organization of neighborhood
organizations), the Federation of Cuban Women, the National Association of
Small Agriculturalists, the University Student Federation, and the Federation
of Secondary School Students.
Once the candidates for deputy to the
National Assembly are approved by the municipal assemblies, the candidates
begin tours of neighborhoods and centers of work and study, in which there are
direct interchanges with the people, with respect to projections and expectations. The people are given ample space to speak,
and in general their comments fall into three categories: expressions of
appreciation of the high quality of the candidates; descriptions of daily
problems, large and small, in the place of work or in the local community,
seeking to increase awareness of the candidates; and expressions of
appreciation of the electoral process and the socialist political-economic
construction of the nation.
During the moths of March and April, the
brief biographies of the candidates were regularly covered on Cuban national
television, gradually presenting the candidates from the different
municipalities across the nation. And
the high-quality interchanges between the candidates and the people were
extensively covered on Cuban television.
As a result, the high-quality of the candidates became evident. This may have been a factor in the increase
in voter participation in the elections for deputies the National Assembly, an
increase from the voter participation rate in the election of delegates in
November to the 169 municipal assemblies of the nation.
 |
| The Voters Speak |
Yanet Solórzano Hamilton, a primary school
teacher in the province of Las Tunas and elected deputy for the municipality of
Puerto Padre, declared that the touring days by the candidates has been
beautiful. “Each place has received us
with respect, with admiration, with clarity concerning the challenges that we
confront today. The support of the
people for our political system, the unity of the people for the Revolution is,
without doubt, a sign that nothing or no one will be able to take away our achievements
and our dreams.”
As noted above, the National Assembly of
People’s Power is the highest authority in the nation. It elects the President of the Republic, and
it confirms the cabinet of ministers presented by the elected President. It elects the highest members of the judicial
branch. It enacts legislation. It has the power to amend the Constitution.
The delegates and deputies of people’s
power are not professional politicians.
The assemblies meet periodically during the year; they are not
permanently in session, although various legislative commissions are in
continuous session. The deputies and
delegates keep their regular employment, except when they have extensive work
on legislative committees, in which case they take a leave of absence from
their post. They do not earn additional
income through their service as delegates and/or deputies.
 |
Newly elected deputy Yanet Solórzano Hamilton
with her students |
The above-described political process is
the structure of people’s people.
Alongside people’s power, there are mass organizations of workers,
neighborhoods, women, agriculturalists, and students, whose role in the
political process was noted above. The
mass organizations were at one time very active, providing structures for the
expression of opinions in the context of face-to-face interaction. They are less active than they once were, and
to some extent they have been displaced by social media. This is unfortunate, because nothing is
better than participatory democracy characterized by open and free
person-to-person exchange of ideas. But
the mass organizations still function; a great majority of the people are
members, and in certain celebratory moments or in the face of a crisis of some
kind, they are highly active.
The Communist Party of Cuba has been left
to the side by the Cuban political process, and deliberately so, because it is
a vanguard political party. It is
composed only of members that are considered leaders, who are selected by the
Party itself. The Party’s role is to
educate and guide the people, to cultivate among the people the consciousness
necessary for the continued construction of a socialist society in accordance
with the particular conditions of the nation.
Its authority is moral, not legal.
It is not necessary to be a member of the
Communist Party of Cuba to be nominated or elected. Most elected delegates and deputies of the
municipal and national assemblies are members of the Party, but many are
not. The Party continues to have high
prestige in Cuba, which is the reason it is able to shape the policies of the
nation without having formal legal and constitutional authority to do so. The unity of purpose of the Party and the
government was established by Fidel and Raúl and it continues today with Miguel
Díaz-Canel, who has been elected by the National Assembly as President of the
Republic and elected by the Party as its First Secretary. This unity of purpose between the Party and
the government depends upon the support of the people, in as much as the
deputies elected by the elected delegates of the people constitute the highest
authority.
The three components, then, of Cuban
people’s democracy are: People’s Power, the delegates and deputies of people’s
assemblies, elected by the people; the mass organizations of neighborhoods,
workers, women, students, and agriculturalists; and the Communist Party, a
vanguard political party that guides but does not decide.
In my view, people’s democracy has
certain definitive advantages over representative democracy. In the first place, in eliminating campaigns
and campaign financing, people’s democracy eliminates the role of money and the
need for politicians to balance the needs of their constituencies with the
interests of their major campaign contributors.
Secondly, in eliminating a situation of competing political parties that
must win elections to survive, people’s democracy removes the conflictive
tendency of representative democracies, and empowers elected officials to
concentrate on the seeking of consensus for the common good. These two dimensions create the structural
conditions for high-quality public discourse that is oriented to the resolution
of problems that the nation and humanity confront. The high quality of public discourse in
people’s democracy, and its superiority over the discourses of politicians in
representative democracies, is clear to all who have had the privilege of
listening to it.
Many people favor direct over indirect
elections. I believe that direct
elections have the intrinsic disadvantage of favoring those who are good at
mobilizing support among people that they will never meet, giving rise to an
industry of campaign management, which has demonstrated its capacity for
manipulation of the issues. I think it
is better to elect delegates at the local level and to entrust them with the
task of responsibly electing deputies at higher levels of government.
Government of,
by, and for the people
When the U.S. government and the Western
media speak of the political process in Cuba, they falsely state that the
authority of the National Assembly is nominal, and that the Communist Party of
Cuba has actual control. In fact, as can
be seen through empirical observation, the authority of the National Assembly
is real. The Party has de facto control,
because when the elected delegates and deputies of the people exercise their
authority in the municipal and national people’s assemblies, they frequently
vote for Party members, because of their commitment to the principles of the
Party, and because of their faith in the leaders of the Party. But in any moment in the future, if the
delegates and deputies of the people’s assemblies were not to have such
commitment and faith, they are fully empowered to vote for others, with
different principles and leaders. They
have been constitutionality granted such authority by the Cuban Revolution, led
by Fidel. However, for such a change in direction
to occur in Cuba, leaders would have to emerge from the breast of the people
who are capable of formulating alternative principles and an alternative
national project, attaining the support of the people for said project; it
could not possibly emerge on the basis of half-baked ideas that have
credibility only in the political culture of the USA.
By Charles McKelvey Published at Network in Defense of Humanity
