When the Cuban revolution triumphed in January 1959, there was a clear, almost unanimous consciousness among the masses of people who identified with that victory over the things that needed to be changed in society. Among them was the electoral system, which was considered a factor in political corruption and the tyranny it led to.
During the first 15 years of the revolution in power, the slogan “elections, for what?” came from a reflection by the leader of the revolution, Fidel Castro. He spoke of the general feeling that the revolution should be the source of law and the instrument for the effective exercise of democracy.
The then-existing electoral system was a copy of the American system, imposed by the US military occupation that the island suffered from 1898 to 1902 and practiced, with slight adjustments, throughout the neocolonial stage until 1958. It was prepared as a capitalist instrument in favor of those candidates who mobilized more economic resources for their campaigns, which guaranteed that it was the commitments they made to the wealthiest financiers that would determine who would be the winning candidate.
In times of normality, every four years citizens enjoyed the right to choose the highest authorities of the nation from among candidates proposed by political parties that ensured the real exercise of power remained with an oligarchy that no one else had elected. A similar picture was presented on the rest of the continent.
When conditions permitted, dissenting forces took part in elections that did not represent a real danger to the control of the situation. If a serious threat was identified, recourse was made to the military coup d’ état by elements of the official nature of the armed forces. Their loyalty to Washington’s interests was guaranteed. The coup plotters would have to exercise power until “representative democracy” could be restored.
The electoral campaigns of the system’s integrated political parties cost many millions of dollars. Candidate propaganda was rife in the press, radio and television, as well as on facades, poles, power lines and telephone lines.
Such an enormous investment, disproportionate to the misery suffered by the majority of the population, would then be repaid to its benefactors by elected politicians through favours stemming from the most indecent corruption.
A new institutionality took shape in 1976,15 years after the popular revolutionary triumph. A new electoral system began to be put into practice, embodied in the new Constitution, which, in turn, was massively discussed. More than 97% of the national electorate contributed and It was approved in a referendum that year.
The new system, which has been refined throughout many electoral events, promotes the most active popular participation. It empowers citizens to select, nominate, elect, control and revoke their representatives without intermediaries. They elect the candidates in public meetings and then, by direct, secret and voluntary vote -from among all those candidates thus created- the delegates to the municipal assemblies of the People’s Power.
It is the Municipal Assemblies, made up entirely of delegates directly elected at the base, which agree on the nominations of delegates to the Provincial Assemblies and those of Deputies to the National Assembly, who in turn will be voted on by the population also directly, secretly and voluntarily.
The candidacy committees -headed by representatives of the Cuban Central de Trabajadores and made up of representatives of social organizations- prepare and present draft nominations for delegates to the provincial assemblies and those of national deputies.
By law, these candidacies must be composed, by 50 per cent, of basic delegates and the rest selected from among proposals of outstanding personalities formulated by the social organizations -workers, peasants, women, students, neighbors and others- of the country and the provinces, as the case may be.
The Cuban electoral system is distinguished by the fact that it does no electoral party participates. The Communist Party of Cuba is not an electoral party, but the historical continuity of the one that José Martí organized to promote the unity of Cubans in order to achieve independence from Spain and prevent the absorption of Cuba by the United States in the way it did with Puerto Rico.
The National Assembly is the supreme organ of state power and the one that chooses its President, its vice president and its secretary, as well as the Council of State, the body that embodies it among its sessions. It has a collegial character and holds the supreme representation of the Cuban State.
The Cuban electoral system can not be considered alternative to the model that the United States considers only acceptable, because it responds to a capitalist order and the Cuban, socialist, is infinitely more democratic and based on human solidarity.
Manuel E. Yepe is a lawyer, economist and journalist. He was a professor at the Higher Institute of International Relations in Havana. He was Cuba's ambassador to Romania, general director of the Prensa Latina agency; vice president of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television; founder and national director of the Technological Information System (TIPS) of the United Nations Program for Development in Cuba, and secretary of the Cuban Movement for the Peace and Sovereignty of the Peoples.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann
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