Democracy Still in Motion: The 2013 Election Results in Cuba

IntroductionThe elections to the Cuban Parliament, or the National Assembly of People's Power (ANPP), took place on February 3, 2013. The voting trends, tendencies and weaknesses in the electoral system identified in my recent book-length study of elections from 1993-2008 have been confirmed by the 2013 voting results (August, 2013).1 This kind of detailed endeavour, although virtually unique, is worthwhile, especially in light of the disinformation and misinformation disseminated by supporters of 'regime change' in Cuba across the spectrum from the so-called 'left' to the right, who replace facts, figures and a balanced analysis with cliches and ignorance.One of the most important voting results to take into account is the 'united' or slate vote (voto unido). This refers to the voting system used in national and provincial elections, in which citizens can vote for the entire slate of candidates in their municipality, as opposed to exercising a selective vote for one or more, but not all, of the candidates in multi-seat municipal constituencies (August, 2013: 174-78; Table 7.9).2 In the elections from 1993 to 2008, the government, the parliament presidency, the party, the mass organizations and the press appealed very strongly to citizens to vote for the whole slate, for the voto unido. However, the proportion voting for the slate vote declined from 95.06 per cent in 1993 to 90.90 per cent in 2008. Ipso facto, the selective vote increased substantially from 1993 to 1998 - more than doubling (August, 2013: Table 7.9).the voto unido in 2013With regard to this trend, at the time and as part of my fieldwork in 2007-2009, several specialists from the academic world were interviewed and their views collected. For example, University of Havana political scientist Emilio Duharte Diaz points to weaknesses in the composition of the candidacies commissions responsible for drawing up lists of candidates to be nominated and offers some suggestions for improvement. Specifically concerning the voting pattern cited above, slate versus selective vote, he considers the election trend as a reflection of the 'critical revolutionary vote', meaning that the citizens are not going beyond the boundaries of the Revolution and the Cuban political system, but rather expressing their discontent with some important aspects of it, with the goal of improving it. If the candidacies commissions are not expanded and further perfected, Duharte Diaz points out, when it comes time to vote, citizens will feel that they are caught up in an 'electoral straitjacket'. (August, 2013: 171-73, 180). Another political system specialist, Jesus Garcia Brigos, reveals a concrete example of how the candidacies commissions, if not improved, can lead to negative consequences (August, 2013: 173). As for Rafael Hernandez, editor of the critical review Temas, he calls for a change in procedure for the candidacies commissions as well as its composition; otherwise, people will consider that the list of nominees has gone through a filtering process (proceso de filtraje) (August, 2013: 162, 173). University of Havana law professor Martha Prieto Valdez also calls for drastic expansion of the nomination procedures and rights of citizens (August, 2013: 173).In 2013, there was also a major shift in the official policy. For the first time since elections to the Cuban parliament were held, there was no call at all, by the institutions noted above, for a slate vote, a voto unido. Thus the voting trends, and concerns expressed by political specialists, were borne out in 2013: the call for a slate vote was abandoned and the floodgates fully opened up. The proportion of citizens exercising the slate vote, in decline since 1993, now plummeted from 90.90 per cent in 2008 to 81.29 per cent in February 2013. Conversely, the selective vote doubled from 9.10 per cent in 2008 to 18.07 per cent in 2013 (Granma Internacional, 8 February 2013). The 'critical revolutionary vote' and the desire to break out of the electoral straitjacket were asserted even further in 2013. …