Cuba holds one-party vote as post-Castro era looms

[webfact]

Cuba holds one-party vote as post-Castro era looms

By Sarah Marsh and Nelson Acosta

 

Cuba's First Vice-President Miguel Diaz-Canel and his wife Lis Cuesta stand in line before Diaz-Canel casts his vote during an election of candidates for the national and provincial assemblies, in Santa Clara Cuba March 11, 2018. REUTERS/Alejandro Ernesto/Pool

 

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cubans went to the polls on Sunday in a one-party vote, the last step before a new president is selected next month, as the Communist-ruled island prepares to be led for the first time since the 1959 revolution by someone whose last name is not Castro.

 

Cubans are asked to endorse two official lists of candidates for the national and provincial assemblies. The government depicts the vote, which takes place every five years, as a symbolic show of unity in the face of U.S. hostility.

 

This year, though, the new national assembly will select a president to replace 86-year-old Raul Castro on April 19. Starting with Raul's late older brother Fidel, the Castros have ruled the Caribbean island for nearly six decades.

 

Leaders of the Cuban exile community in the United States, including Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, have called on President Donald Trump not to recognise the election results, saying the process is a fraud designed to legitimize a dictatorship.

 

Raul Castro voted with little fanfare at dawn in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra mountains in southeast Cuba, where he had led a group of guerrillas during the revolution.

 

Castro, who succeeded his brother as president in 2008, is expected to remain at the helm of the powerful Communist Party while First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, 57, is expected to become president.

 

Diaz-Canel, a party functionary since his youth, would be Cuba's first modern head of state who was born after the revolution and has no military history.

 

In central Villa Clara province, where Diaz-Canel grew up and was head of the Communist Party, the candidate and his wife voted alongside local residents, smiling and chatting with them.

 

He told reporters the election signalled that Cubans wanted to defend their independence, and criticised the Trump administration for undermining a fragile detente established under former U.S. President Barack Obama.

 

"Relations with the United States have been deteriorating ... due to an administration that has offended Cuba, strengthened the blockade against Cuba, returned to the rhetoric of the Cold War and adopted measures that offends and harms millions of Cubans and North Americans," Diaz-Canel said after casting his ballot.

 

But Rafael Hernandez, one of Cuba's leading political analysts and editor of the magazine Temas, said if Diaz-Canel becomes president, he will not have the same moral authority as the "historic generation" of revolutionary leaders. He will have to establish his legitimacy by addressing voters' concerns and raising living standards.

 

The task will be more challenging at a time when aid from ally Venezuela has fallen, relations with the United States have deteriorated, and efforts to modernize the economy and introduce market reforms have dragged due to what the government admits is a lack of preparedness.

 

"For many Cubans, elections have never represented change," said Rafael Padron, 37, a personal sports trainer in Havana. "But this is a key moment."

 

More than eight million Cubans are eligible to vote and turnout is traditionally around 85 percent.

 

While candidates on the slates are not required to belong to the Communist Party, the only legal party in Cuba, most do.

 

The parliamentary candidates, selected by party-controlled commissions, include Raul Castro and two men who fought with him in the mountains during the revolution: Vice presidents Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, 87, and Ramiro Valdes, 85.

 

Castro has said he will step down as president at the end of his second five-year term in April, but will continue as a National Assembly deputy. Many analysts expect his fellow revolutionaries to retire from the government, marking a generational shift.

 

"We don't know what will happen exactly," said Arnaldo Betancourt, 52, who sells handicrafts in Havana, "but people want to see new things, a change for the better."

 

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh, Nelson Acosta and Marc Frank; Editing by Daniel Flynn, Rosalba O'Brien and Jeffrey Benkoe)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-03-12

[YetAnother]

12 minutes ago, webfact said:

a one-party vote,

quite the concept

[spidermike007]

Not much has changed since the so called reform. Much the same as Burma. It was about attracting foreign investment, and getting the US to give in, on the sanctions. For the average Cuban, life has improved a little bit. For the tourists, prices have doubled. 

 

I had the good fortune of visiting Cuba many times, while "LA chcaracha grande" was still in power. I befriended many in Cuba. Amazing place. Extraordinary people. Great culture. But, all had the same thing to say about Fidel.

 

They had a great PR machine, and it would crank out alot of hyperbole about their educational and healthcare system being the best in the world. And you would then have numskulls like Michael Moore pick up on that, and run with it, to create utter disinformation campaigns. Yes, they did produce the greatest number of doctors per capita. But, most would have to leave the country to make a living, as they could not live very well on the $40 a month government salary. I met civil engineers, who had trained in Russia, and specialized in suspension bridges, who made $38 a month, and moonlighted as tour guides, to feed their families. All the while Castro was living in his gilded mansion, feasting on lobster tail, and socking away billions. For some of us, we were able to see for ourselves, and we saw that the dissemination was just that. When I would meet locals, they would nearly all say the same thing. Fidel was universally despised, and so was the regime. All of that was said in hushed tones, for fear of being discovered, and sent to one of his concentration camps, or marched before a firing squad. I would stop to chat with a local, and within minutes he would get picked up by the police. I would later find out he was held for days, under suspicion of offering either prostitution services or currency exchange. The government hated for the people to engage in exchange, as it gave them power and freedom. It was sickening. I stopped visiting, around 2008, as I got so disgusted with the government and the low quality of life the people had to endure under the despotic regime of the Castro brothers. They are absolute vermin, on every level. I was told by reputable sources that both brothers had fortunes into the tens of billions of dollars, and many of the generals were worth billions. Total hypocrisy. Castro lost his ideals, and sight of the bigger picture within 30 days of assuming power. It was all about the money, and the power, and the totalitarian rule. It was not about the people.

 

Very, very typical of the regime of despots. You have been made so poor by our policies, and our systematic repression of the people, that there is no way you could afford a $60 boom box. I know people who have been put into jail for the most minor of offenses. During my last trip in about 2008, "la grande cucaracha" (Fidel, for those of you who do not speak spanish. The grand cockroach). started losing his faculties, and really begun a heavy crackdown. He became very paranoid, and probably should have been put on heavy anti-depresent of bi-polar meds. He started having people locked up for the most minor of offenses. Women who were hanging out talking to their friends were locked up on suspicion of prostitution. It was quite sickening. I left a few days early on that trip, and vowed to never return, until they had cleared out the vermin. I hope that happens. Nothing of any real significance will happen as long as Raul is in power. No doubt he is less dogmatic than his older brother. But, he is also a pragmatist. If he can still maintain absolute control, while amassing many more billions of dollars, why not? 

 

I wish the best for the Cuban people. They deserve a better life, and they deserve better government. They will not get it with Raul in power. Nor his cronies. 

[Srikcir]

If Diaz-Canel could somehow get himself President For Life like China's Xi, he might get Trump's admiration and loyalty.