Elections to renew Cuba’s parliament, held on the island on Sunday, brought no surprises. The 470 MP candidates proposed by an official electoral commission were elected without difficulty, including former President Raúl Castro (91) and current President Miguel Díaz-Canel (62), who may opt for a second term next April 19 when the National Assembly becomes constituted, which must elect a new government. Abstention was once again the protagonist of these elections: one in four Cubans called to the polls did not vote, an upward trend that analysts interpret as a penalty vote as the country experiences one of the worst crises in its history.
More than 8,100,000 Cubans eligible to vote were summoned to these elections: 75.92% of voters participated, ten points fewer than in the 2018 elections to renew the National Assembly, when 85.65% of voters voted. It is a small relief for the authorities, however, as last year’s local elections saw 31.5% abstention, a record high in a country used to unanimity during Fidel Castro’s lifetime, when turnout almost always exceeded 95%. lay.
In the 2015 elections with Raúl Castro as President, the turnout was 89%, in the November 2017 municipal elections the abstention rose to 14%. In the September 2022 referendum to adopt a new family code, 25% of eligible Cuban voters did not vote (and of the valid votes, 32% went against the government’s position).
growing distance
In any country in the world these results would be presented as a victory for the government, but in Cuba, where only the Communist Party exists and it is so difficult to gauge the social and political temperature, the growing distance this trend reflects is somewhat too to consider and difficult to read.
A child watches the street from one of the polling centers in Havana this Sunday.ALEXANDRE MENEGHINI (Portal)
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It has long been clear that the days of seamless unanimity and massive votes in support of the Cuban government are over. And also that the social unrest caused by economic hardship and a lack of future prospects has increased exponentially in recent years. In addition, the number of mostly young Cubans who have left their country in the last year and a half is overwhelming. It is estimated that during this period more than 320,000 entered the United States illegally via the Mexican border, to which must be added tens of thousands who have emigrated to other countries and thousands who have attempted to cross the Florida Straits Ships, most of which were intercepted by US Coast Guard ships and deported to the island.
The government feared that the abstention rate – called for by weak opposition forces – would be higher in these elections than in the local elections last November (31.5%). For this reason, the authorities lived almost in triumph that the turnout exceeded 75% and they hastened to qualify the result as “a yes for Cuba, for the revolution and for socialism” and considered it a “success”.
“This Sunday was a day of celebration, joy, affirmation, conviction. And once again we had a revolutionary victory, a victory for our people,” said the Cuban President on Twitter, who recently arrived in the Dominican Republic from the Ibero-American Presidential Summit. On Monday he added jubilantly on this social network: “Since yesterday we said it: we trust our people who came out to defend the revolution. Despite the draconian measures taken by the United States, despite the fierce campaigning and calls for abstention, Cuba won”.
There is no doubt that the 470 MP candidates proposed by the Electoral Commission would be elected for the same number of seats. To get elected, it was enough for them to get 50% of the valid votes, and that’s how it was. The electoral system is designed in such a way that rejection of the proposed candidates is virtually impossible, since more than half of the voters would have to vote against to do so.
Of the 6,164. Of the 876 Cubans who exercised their right to vote in Sunday’s elections, 6.22% voted blank and 3.50% of the ballots were annulled. In other words, between abstentions, zero votes and blank votes, one in three Cubans did not follow the official slogan, a percentage that is not negligible given the unique Cuban situation and which, say analysts, including some officials close to the theses, officials of government should be factored into any future political equation.
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