Cubans Go to the Polls

February 3, 2013 | | Print Print |

HAVANA TIMES — Over 90% of the 8.6 million Cubans, 16 years old or older, are expected to vote on Sunday for a slate of 612 candidates for the countries national legislature, called the National Assembly of Peoples Power.

Candidates (1,269) to the different provincial parliaments will also be elected.

Cuba holds general elections every five years.  The new parliament will then elect a Council of State and the nation’s president and vice presidents. Raul Castro, 81, is expected to be reelected to a second term in office in February when the new legislature convenes.

 


What's your opinion?

  • alsdally

    I usually get quite excited about elections, anywhere else in the world. In the case of Cuba, yawn. Nothing changes and there seems to be no point to this assembly except to legitimate the hold on power of the historical leadership.

  • Griffin

    Given that there is no other candidate for president, it is exceedingly unlikely for Raul not to be re-elected.

    • Moses Patterson

      Hahaha! Really going out on a limb with that prediction:). Government-controlled Cuban media complains that the international press do not cover Cuban elections with the level of interest they believe they deserve. Maybe because watching grass grow offers more suspense!

  • Grady R. Daugherty

    One big problem of the electoral system in Cuba seems to be that the voting process is called “elections,” whereas they might more accurately be called “confirmation voting.”

    I mean, many people criticize the Cuban process as “phony” elections, since the candidates are unopposed, and this is a fairly reasonable point of view. So, by calling the what they truly are, a public relations benefit might be the result.

  • andi

    What a joke!!!!

  • Grady R. Daugherty

    The “confirmation voting process” in Cuba is a good case in point as to the difference between Marxian, state monopoly ownership socialism, on the one hand, and the proposed cooperative, state co-ownership socialism of the US cooperative republic movement, on the other.

    In the former the all-owning state can brook no frothy contest for contrasting development tweaks to the socialist model; while by contrast the latter would constantly develop and renew itself by such a healthy, democratic struggle.

    What is needed, in Cuba and in the world socialist movement, is to discard the old Marxian deviation from authentic socialism, and to regroup around a corrected strategic program and vision.