Cuba votes in municipal elections, and the opposition denounces “pressure”

This content was published on Nov 27, 2022 – 14:27
November 27, 2022 – 14:27

(AFP)

Cubans are heading Sunday to elect municipal authorities in the context of a severe economic crisis, calling for abstention by opponents who denounce the “pressure” on their candidates.

These elections open a unique electoral mechanism, which has been in effect since 1976, and will continue with the renewal of Parliament in 2023, which is scheduled to end next year with the presidential elections.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who arrived in Havana at dawn Sunday after completing a tour in Algeria, Russia, Turkey and China, went to vote with his wife Liz Cuesta at a polling station in the municipality of Playa in the west. capital.

This “electoral process certifies that Cuba maintains political stability” and “its social stability, regardless of the battle of economic suffocation that they are trying to carry out so that the population turns out of discontent (…) to the society they crave. After the vote, the president told reporters that the outbreak You want the United States.

Over eight million people over the age of 16 (in a population of 11.2 million) were called to elect by direct and secret vote 12,427 municipal people’s power delegates (councillors) out of some 27,000 candidates proposed by a show of hands on neighborhood councils.

The municipality is the only level where citizens vote directly for their candidates.

– Campaigns for and against –

With the designation “YoVotoEl27”, the government has deployed an intense campaign on social networks, as well as in the press and on television, both under the control of the ruling Communist Party (PCC, FRID), which does not assume but rather supervises the operation.

Cuban law does not allow candidates to proselytize. Once candidates are identified, their resumes are placed at polling stations so that residents know their paths and choose.

For its part, the Democratic Transition Council (CTDC), an opposition platform promoting change through legal channels, called for abstentions under the slogan “Without pluralism, #YoMeAbstengo”.

The center’s vice president, Manuel Cuesta, explained to AFP that three candidates “the political police (…) have made it impossible for them to participate (in rallies) because they have serious chances of winning.”

The fourth candidate, José Cabrera, was “nominated” in the municipality of Palma Soriano, in Santiago de Cuba (southeast), but then “they began to threaten him with expulsion” and “to pressure him to remove himself from the council”.

“Security and police are watching his bloc” His resume as a candidate has not been published.

The Cuban government classifies the dissidents as “mercenaries” of the United States.

Elected councilors form municipal governments and propose in 2023 among them 50% of the candidates for the national parliament; The remaining 50% will be proposed by a committee made up of social organizations close to the government.

Parliament, in turn, proposes nominations to merge the State Council and the Presidency of the Republic, which are for five-year terms with the option of re-election once.

The elections, the first since Diaz-Canel assumed leadership of the country (2018), are taking place in the midst of a deep economic crisis afflicting the island, with food and medicine shortages and daily power outages, as well as migration. exodus.

In the referendum that approved the new family law in October, turnout was 74.12% of the electoral list, the lowest ever recorded in a vote on the island.

Candidates who do not secure a simple majority on Sunday will run in the second round of elections on December 4.