2008 is an election year. Early in the new year, the US presidential election campaigns were front-page news in the British media, keen to show the merits of ‘democracy’, as candidates of war, poverty and bourgeois rule compete for power. The election doesn’t take place until November 2008 – billions of dollars will be spent on the whole charade and millions of working class people in the US will see no reason to vote. Meanwhile in Cuba, the opposite has been taking place. Under a system known as People’s Power, Cuba’s recent local and national elections involved the vast majority of the population taking an active part. Real democracy is alive and kicking in Cuba. LOUIS BREHONY reports.
Local elections
Under socialism in Cuba elections involve the masses in every step. The election of representatives to the 169 municipal assemblies of people’s power took place on 21 October 2007, but the process began on 1 September. Over the course of 26 days, more than 50,670 meetings took place in community halls, centres and on streets to nominate candidates to stand in the election. Over 7 million Cubans took part in debates about who should represent their area. On 27 September it was announced that 37,328 candidates had been nominated for election, with a significant 17% rise in women nominees.
In terms of election campaigning, the Cuban system works to prevent the kind of self-serving vote-grabbing that characterises capitalist elections. The decision to stand a candidate comes from the community, not the individual. The only publicity allowed is a photo and biography detailing the candidate’s background, education, membership of mass organisations and work history. To be elected as a local representative is seen as a sacrifice – officials are unpaid and carry on their ordinary jobs at the same time. All elected leaders in Cuba can be recalled from office at any time by the population.
The next step was to prepare for the election itself. 186,400 citizens volunteered to join one of 37,280 electoral ‘colleges’, each made up of a president and four more members. Half a million students from primary and secondary schools symbolically guard the ballot boxes. With the members and volunteers of the electoral commissions of each district and municipality in charge of the organisation and control of the voting, nearly one million Cuban citizens were involved in facilitating the election.
In the 21 October 2007 municipal elections 8,176,085 Cubans voted out of an eligible total of 8,473,833. 320,000 young people exercised their right to vote for the first time. Far from the imperialist propaganda about Cuban leaders ‘clinging’ to power, 51% of the people voted in were new to their posts. 26% were women, a figure which has continued to rise since the figure of just 7.9% in 1976. On 28 October a second round of voting took place in areas where no-one received the minimum 50% of the local vote.
National elections
With the municipal elections barely over, Cuba began to prepare for the 20 January 2008 elections to the Provincial Assemblies and the National Assembly of People’s Power, Cuba’s national government. Half the candidates were first nominated as representatives in their voting districts and later elected to the local assemblies. The rest were chosen by mass organisations, including the street committees (CDRs), trade unions, farm ers’ unions, the Women’s Federation, and student organisations.
From early December until 15 January, local meetings were held to discuss candidates. Under Cuban law candidates participate as a group in these events and cannot speak on their own behalf. In all, 614 citizens were nominated for seats in the National Assembly and 1,201 for Provincial Assemblies, selected from among a broader list of 55,000 ‘pre-candidates’.
Of the national candidates, 60.91% were born after the revolution in 1959 and more than 63.22% are newcomers to the national government.
Debate
Throughout the whole democratic process Cuban writers and leaders have put forward for debate important issues around the history of elections in Cuba and about the nature of class rule in Cuba and in other countries. Before the October election, the newspaper of the UJC, Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth), did surveys in four cities across the island to find out the attitudes of young people towards elections and, though the views put forward are quite critical, they show an engaged and conscious young population, involved in developing ideas about the future. Rafael Aguilar from Havana commented that ‘youth should assume the range of challenges to guarantee the continuity of the Revolution. Older people who now run Popular Power and other structures were once young like us; they learned on the job. The same thing applies to us now.’ Alina, a student from Matanzas, talking about youth participation in Cuban elections, said ‘It doesn’t matter how old a person is, what’s key is their ideas, and ideas have no age.’ From the election results it is clear that young people have a big part to play in leading Cuba’s effort to build socialism.
In December Raul Castro remarked, ‘Our enemies speak of democracy, criticise us because, according to them, there are no elections here, but if all the countries of the planet were to be studied one by one, you could say that some of them do have a democracy adjusted to their class system, but not that any one of them is more democratic than ours.’ In the US, he said, much is made of the ‘democracy’ of having two parties, yet a Republican president organised the Bay of Pigs invasion and a Democratic leader immorally executed it.
Considering their usual concern for ‘democracy,’ ruling class politicians in the US and Europe have hardly muttered a word about the Cuban elections. Their media henchmen have ignored them outright. President Bush said in October that unless there is a ‘multi-party democracy’, free rein for businessmen, and access to grants and loans (presumably from the US), then ‘elections are only cynical exercises that give dictatorships a legitimacy they do not deserve.’ From 1 October 2007 to 9 January 2008 the New York Times carried 36 articles and reports about Cuba. There was no mention of the local election and the only brief references to the national election were in four very brief reports speculating on whether Fidel Castro would retire. Similarly, in Britain, The Guardian carried 29 articles about Cuba, mentioning the election three times, again only in reference to Fidel – one headline reading ‘Castro gets chance to hold on to power’. The silent treatment given to Cuba’s democratic process says it all: socialism is the kind of democracy the imperialists fear the most.
Cuba deepens revolution
2008 began with the announcement that Cuba achieved 7.5% economic growth in 2007 and an infant mortality rate of 5.3 per 1,000 live births. These are real successes – hard won in the face of US imperialism’s fierce and intensified economic war against Cuba. Between 2004 and 2007 accumulated Gross Domestic Product in Cuba has risen by 42.5%. The infant mortality rate is below that of the US and is the American continent’s lowest, along with that of Canada. When Fidel Castro became ill in August 2006 the imperialists and counter-revolutionary gangs in Florida began to celebrate in anticipation of getting their hands on Cuba again. The Cuban communists and Cuban people respon ded calmly, collectively and with assurance. In 215,687 meetings they have discussed the country’s economic and social problems and how to solve them – this process is ongoing. This January they have voted in Provisional and National Assembly elections with a 96% turnout. Fidel Castro was re-elected as a National Assembly delegate. The Cuban people’s reply to the excitement in Washington and Miami is to deepen the revolution and build socialism. This is the real testimony to the leadership of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Communist Party, now in ‘Year 50 of the Revolution’.
FRFI 201 February / March 2008
