Cuba's
upcoming elections are neither free nor
fair
People
in Need. October 18, 2007.
This Saturday, 21 October 2007, Cuba will
begin municipal elections for the first
time since Fidel Castro handed over the
power to his brother Raúl in 2006.
These elections are a first step towards
the elections for the National Assembly
that will be held in the spring of 2008.
Delegates elected at the municipal level
play a direct role in determining who the
candidates will be for the national elections
next year. However, these elections should
not be considered free or fair by any democratic
standard.
People in Need, a Czech human rights and
development NGO, calls upon the media and
policy makers not to confuse the elections
in Cuba with what are commonly called elections
in democratic countries. Cuba continues
to be governed by a single party regime
which imprisons internal opposition and
severely limits freedoms that are considered
sacred in all other democratic countries.
There are basic ways in which the Cuban
people are not able to participate in these
elections by their own free will and which
the selections of candidates are limited
and unfair.
An enclosed legal and political analysis
of the elections by Rene Gomez Manzano,
a prominent Cuban lawyer, argues that the
municipal and parliamentary elections are
not free or fair because:
During the municipal elections, Cubans:
- cannot vote in secret ballots, candidates
are chosen in public meetings
- cannot control the counting of ballots
at all the levels of electoral committees
During the Parliamentary elections, Cubans:
- have almost no real choice in who can
be considered a candidate since they have
no right to propose independent candidates
on a national level
- the number of candidates is equal to
the number of people who are to be elected
- candidates are chosen by six specific
organizations under the direct control of
the communist party
- not affiliated with one of these six
organizations have no means of participating
in the selection process.
- voters can be over-represented by serving
on one or several of the organizations
- voters can only select the approved candidates
for the ballots to be considered valid
- ballots with no candidate selected or
with write-in or other suggestions are invalid
Various members of the opposition have
criticized the electoral system. Owaldo
Paya Sardinas, leader of the Christian Liberation
Movement, called upon the government to
change the law and allow real free and fair
elections. "In this moment in our history,
Cuba needs transparency and confidence and
that only can be achieved by respecting
the ideas and rights of everyone, not imposing
an electoral process ... that for years
has impeded the people from freely expressing
and deciding for itself," he wrote.
Martha Beatriz Roque, an economist and former
political prisoner, said that the elections
are not secret, because candidates are selected
only in public reunions. "Imagine what
support can an oppositon's cadidate get
in this public meeting in front of all these
people from government's apparatus. He will
immediately has to think about his sons
and family, in fact that they can all loose
a job or that he can even become a prisoner,"
she wrote.
We ask the media and policy makers not
to follow the Cuban regimes propaganda and
to learn more about the real working of
this process. To that end you can find bellow
the two analysis by Rene Gomez Manzano.
For more information you can directly contact
following people in Cuba:
* Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas,
leader of the Christian Movement Liberation
(Movimiento Cristiano Liberación
- MCL) and author of the Varela Project,
which calls for a referendum on civil liberties.
In 2002, the Sakharov Prize was presented
to Payá by the European Parliament,
and he has been nominated for the Nobel
Prize for Peace several times. Phone: +537
41 01 49 or +537 40 48 56.
* Martha Beatriz Roque, economist, and one
of the two women arrested during the crackdown
in March 2003. Roque joined the opposition
in the end of 1990 and, in 1994, founded
the Cuban Institute of Independent Economists
(Instituto Cubano de Economistas Independientes).
She was condemned to three years in prison
in 1997. In 2002, Martha Beatriz founded
the Asamblea para Promover la Sociedad Civil,
a coalition of more than 300 democratic
organizations on the island. Phone: +53-7-946821
* Oscar Espinosa Chepe, one of the 14 journalists
set free, for health reasons, from the so-
called Group of 75, formed by the dissidents
imprisoned in March 2003. Since his liberation,
Espinosa has become one of the main sources
of information for those who want to know
more about the situation in Cuba. He continues
to send his articles and analyses abroad.
His wife, Miriam Leiva, is a well known
member of the Cuban opposition, as well.
Phone: +537 209 4645
* Laura Pollán, wife of independent
journalist Carlos Maseda, arrested in March
2003 and condemned to twenty years in prison.
Poyán is a founding member of the
Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) movement,
which received the Sakharov Prize of the
European Parliament in 2005. Phone: 53-7-873-4165
People in Need is a Czech
human rights and development non-profit
organization. In its Cuba programme, it
has been helping political prisoners, emerging
civil society and independent journalists
since 1997. Please find more at www.peopleinneed.cz
and www.icdcprague.org.
Related material:
Parliamentary
Elections in today's Cuba
Municipal elections in
Cuba
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