EYEWITNESS CUBA
Where elections are truly free
By Scott Scheffer
Havana, Cuba
A delegation of North American, European and
Canadian activists organized by Reverend Lucius Walker and the
Pastors for Peace visited Cuba at the end of July. Our trip's
objective, like the seven previous U.S./Cuba Friendshipment
Caravans, was to break the U.S. blockade on Cuba.
During our eight-day stay, we broke into groups and traveled
to different provinces. We visited neighborhoods organized by
Committees in Defense of the Revolution, hospitals, organic
farms, schools and workplaces. We also visited people in their
homes.
The final three days were spent attending the first
U.S./Cuba Solidarity Conference, along with a delegation from
the Venceremos Brigade. The conference was addressed by leaders
of the Cuban government and the Cuban Communist Party.
Of particular importance was a speech by Ricardo Alarcon,
the president of the National Assembly. He described how
workers' democracy under socialism is the backbone of the Cuban
revolution and how it has helped them survive the 39-year U.S.
blockade.
Alarcon explained the relationship of the Cuban population
to the government, how elections to the government take place,
and how the masses influence the life of the country. His talk
reinforced much of what I had learned in conversations with
Cuban people.
What makes Cuba's elected
officials different?
In a capitalist democracy, especially in the United States,
when a candidate wins an election, the people's involvement in
the political process usually ends. The elected officials then
vote on issues in any way they see fit. And almost without
exception they act in the interests of big business, whose
giant, well-funded electoral machines help put them in office
in the first place.
In Cuba it is completely different. The entire population is
organized on the basis of neighborhoods. Every neighborhood
nominates from two to five candidates for the Municipal
Assembly and the Provincial Assembly. Together these two bodies
make up the National Assembly of People's Power, which appoints
all the ministers and the president of the country.
The nominations from the neighborhoods are submitted to the
local election commission. If they are approved, the commission
writes a biography for each candidate and posts it with a
photograph in public places so that a general election can take
place.
What really makes Cuba different, however, is that a
candidate can't spend hundreds of thousands or millions of
dollars to buy a victory, like in the United States. In fact,
it is illegal to spend any money on an election.
Candidates are elected by people who know them from their
jobs and neighborhoods. Most elected positions are actually
unpaid, and the officials have to keep working at their regular
jobs. The relatively few paid officials receive a pay
equivalent to what they got on their regular job, and when
their term is finished they return to that job.
As Alarcon explained this, I remembered a visit to a
Municipal Council in a neighborhood of Havana called Reparte
Electrico. After a talk by the municipal president, the
equivalent of a mayor, one of the delegates from the U.S. asked
if any privileges came with the job. The speaker said he had
been given a car, but that it was understood that officials who
have cars must stop and pick up passengers each morning and
evening to help alleviate the transportation problems.
It is hard to imagine any U.S. mayor giving people a lift to
work, but the speaker said that if a Cuban official receives a
privilege like a car and doesn't use it for the benefit of the
neighborhood, he or she will develop a bad reputation.
Voters can, and do, remove officials
That's important, because in Cuba every neighborhood is
empowered to end the mandate of any official. And sometimes
they do. Cuba has the most effective system of recall in the
world; officials can be removed by their constituents as easily
as they can be voted in. During a visit to the province of
Pinar Del Rio, I heard about a municipality where only one
mayor has finished a complete term since 1976.
By law, Cuban officials must spend a good deal of their time
reporting back to the neighborhood or workplace that nominated
them to assure the people that they are doing a good job. These
principles provide for a relationship between the Cuban people
and their government that is unmatched in any bourgeois
country.
President Alarcon explained that "In a socialist society, a
revolutionary society like ours, the electoral system is
nothing more than a reflex of a much wider participatory
system."
This participation by the highly politicized Cuban masses
guarantees that the Cuban population not only shares
prosperity, but shoulders equally the hardships. For example,
it was explained to me by a young Communist Party member that
neighborhoods in bad need of repair may be populated by
physicists or medical doctors, as well as bus drivers and
waiters. The same goes for neighborhoods that are in great
condition.
Alarcon referred to a recent study by an international body
called the "Economic Commission for Latin America." This study
credits Cuba with lessening the social costs that came with the
economic reforms of the early 1990s. The reforms were enacted
after much of Cuba's trade revenue was lost due to the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist
countries. This development, combined with the effects of the
U.S. blockade, caused terrible economic hardship for Cuba.
The report compared this period-which Cuba calls the
"Special Period"-with the impact of the Great Depression of the
1930s on Latin America. The study's writers, who aren't
socialists, admit that Cuba has survived the hardship through
guaranteed employment and income, as well as equal distribution
of the impact on Cuban workers.
According to Alarcon, it was the wide discussions in every
neighborhood and workplace preceding the reforms that helped
determine how they would be carried out. In other words,
workers' power became a weapon with which the Cuban people
survived the "Special Period" and defended their
revolution.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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