Revolutionary “triumph” despite widespread apathy and the specter of abstention. The National Electoral Commission (CEN) has made public the first results, favorable to the government, which have immediately raised suspicions of irregularities among opponents and activists, despite being the highest abstention in parliamentary elections in history.
Almost six million Cubans (70.34%) would have voted up to two hours before the polls closed (the day was extended by one hour by order of the CEN), despite the limited presence in the polls, reported by observers and journalists They managed to evade the police cordon. The final result would be above 75%, according to the transpolation of the results carried out by opposition groups.
In this way, in the absence of the latest CEN bulletin, the electoral theater arranged by the Cuban regime would mean a complete “success” for President Miguel Díez-Canel, whose presidency for five years was also under review. The “support” for his management would have grown strangely since the municipal elections of November 2022. On that occasion, he only voted 68% of the electoral census, a historical minimum.
In advance, the 470 candidates for 470 seats were already considered ratified, whose first mission in April will be to re-elect Díaz-Canel for a new five-year presidential term.
The anti-revolutionary trend of the “vote against” has been growing step by step from plebiscite levels of more than 90%, increased after the popular rebellion of July 11, 2021. A trend that stopped yesterday, although if it is measured only with the elections parliamentarians five years ago, when the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) reached 85% of the vote, the rejection would have grown.
The PCC celebrated in advance the triumph of the revolution in the midst of the greatest migratory crisis in history: “Images that come from all over Cuba. Beautiful, inspiring. Each one of them could, by itself, describe this day. The commitment, confidence, commitment, the desire to fight for the common good. Each of them defines a word: revolution”.
“The call for abstention in networks and digital media of our enemies failed. Long live Cuba!”, harangued former minister Abel Prieto after learning the first results. Nicolás Maduro, from Caracas, congratulated the “brother Cuban people” for ratifying their “firm and vigorous support for the revolutionary project. We march together in the construction of a better world!”
In these first data, only votes against abstention are counted, in the absence of knowing how many Cubans chose to force their invalid vote or make it blank. Last year the sum of both exceeded 10%.
As expected inside and outside the island, State Security deployed a police operation to prevent the work of independent journalists and the action of electoral observers. Various arrests were denounced, including that of Manuel Cuesta Morúa, vice president of the Democratic Transition Council and leader of the Social Democrat Arco Progresista. EL MUNDO spoke with Morúa minutes before being captured while witnessing the “little influx” of voters at schools in Centro Habana, one of the capital’s popular neighborhoods.
The activists managed to detect double voting (the same person in different places), coercion to force the vote and the shielding of the final counts at the tables, which could not be observed.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
