“Since yesterday (on Sunday) we said it: we trust our people, who came out to defend the revolution. Despite the draconian measures of the United States, despite the fierce campaign and the calls for abstentionism, Cuba won,” celebrated the President Miguel Díaz-Canel the official results of the parliamentary elections.
According to the National Electoral Council (CEN), 75.92% of Cubans would have voted, so the abstention would add up to 24.08%. “There are numbers that say more than words,” the president congratulated himself, although these are impossible numbers in a democracy, a “Soviet” process without transparency that prevents it from being audited: the 470 candidates presented by the revolution will be the 470 congressmen of the Assembly National of People’s Power.
And besides, we must count the blank and invalid vote, which has increased, because the vote against does not exist in the Castro “democratic model.” On this occasion, 6.22% voted blank and 3.50% were null. Both ways of voting are added to those who have abstained to complete the so-called vote against, which would add a final support for the government of between 68% and 69% of the voters.
On the one hand, it is the highest abstention rate in parliamentary elections (85.65% voted in 2018). But on the other, the trend of the last elections, which confirmed the despair of the Cuban people after more than six decades of dictatorship, has been halted, at least officially.
In the local elections last November, only 68% of the census voted. And since then the problems have become more acute: the biggest migratory crisis in history has deepened, the queues remain, the electricity crisis has not abated, even the protests have continued.
“The most irregular elections in history,” reacted in a joint statement of the Cuban Electoral Defense Commission (Cocude), Electoral Rights Observers (ODE) and Citizen Observers of Electoral Processes (COPE). The three organizations have denounced a “sea of irregularities”, ranging from coercion at homes and hospitals to prizes in exchange for votes, going through the one-hour delay to close the polls and the prohibition to witness the counting of the ballots. .
Experts such as the historian Armando Chaguaceda calculate, based on all these data and previous analyses, that the actual participation was between 55% and 65%. “The official figures do not agree with the actual behavior of the electorate,” conclude the three observer organizations.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project