The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.39           November 10, 1997 
 
 
Cuban Vote Registers Support For Revolution  

BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
HAVANA - Some 7.7 million Cubans went to the polls in late October to elect delegates to the municipal assemblies of People's Power, the country's local government bodies. Many people here view the high turnout- up from the 1995 elections-as a registration of the deep popular support for the revolution and its leadership, even in face of Cuba's serious economic crisis.

Elections to the municipal assemblies are held every two and a half years. Voting for the provincial assemblies and the National Assembly-scheduled for January 11-is every five years.

Some 97.6 percent of eligible voters turned out October 19 to elect 13,435 delegates to the municipal assemblies throughout the island, choosing among 31,276 candidates. They replaced just over half of the incumbent delegates.

A second round of voting took place October 26 in the 1,098 local districts where none of the candidates had received more than 50 percent of the votes. This year, with a higher number of candidates, there were three times as many runoff elections as in the 1995 balloting. Of those elected, 17 percent are women and 12.5 percent are under the age of 30.

By law there must be a minimum of two and a maximum of eight candidates for every contested seat. In Cuba the Communist Party does not nominate or campaign for candidates, and not all candidates are CP members. Instead, citizens nominate candidates at neighborhood meetings, which this year took place in September, and their biographies are posted for the information of voters. The majority of municipal delegates continue working their regular jobs, and carry out their responsibilities as elected officials after work, receiving no pay other than the wages from their workplace.

One typical election took place in a community in the western Havana municipality of Playa, also known as Miramar. This municipality, with nearly 200,000 eligible voters, is divided into 103 circunscripciones, or neighborhood districts, each of which elected one delegate to the Playa municipal assembly. In one of these districts, residents had proposed two candidates at their local nomination meetings in September - Yuri Elio and Javier Duarte, the incumbent.

Brief biographies of each candidate were posted at the local polling station. Duarte, 29, is a technician at the electric company who currently serves as a vice president of the local People's Council, a governmental structure encompassing several circunscripciones. "I work full-time for the People's Council now, but I'm still an employee of the electrical company, which pays my salary," Duarte said in an interview on election day. "If I'm not reelected to the council, I'll go back to my regular job."

Duarte's biography reports that he has a high school diploma, is active in the Union of Young Communists (UJC), has served as captain of his local unit of the Territorial Troop Militias, and has participated in a voluntary minibrigade carrying out community services, among other things.

Yuri Elio, 28, was identified as an employee of the Industrial Military Enterprise who works full-time as first secretary of the UJC in Playa. He is a university graduate, has studied in the Soviet Union, and, like Duarte, has taken part in many political mobilizations both locally and nationally.

`See how our democracy works'
The polls opened at 7:00 a.m. and closed at 6:00 p.m. In this district, as in many, the big majority of voters had cast their ballots within the first hour or two. The atmosphere at the polls, which were monitored by a pair of Pioneers, the children's organization, was professional but relaxed. At 6:00 p.m. the four volunteers staffing the polling station shut the doors and counted the ballots with several local residents acting as witnesses. They invited a Militant reporter to watch the process, "so you can see how our democracy works," as one of them put it.

The tellers did multiple rounds of meticulous counting and tallying ballots. "It's taken us three rounds because this is the first time any of us has done this, and we wanted to make sure we accounted for every ballot," one of the tellers explained.

After the witnesses certified that the correct procedures had been followed, the head teller announced the results: 199 votes for Duarte, 69 for Elio, 13 spoiled ballots, and 3 blank ballots. The spoiled ballots were either crossed out, had an "x" next to both names, or were otherwise not clearly marked. The next day, it was announced that Duarte had been reelected as delegate, winning a total of 1,064 votes to Elio's 310.

Nationally the number of spoiled or blank ballots was 7.2 percent, lower than the 11 percent registered in the 1995 municipal elections, when the worst of Cuba's economic crisis was only just beginning to ease. The figures for spoiled or blank ballots were highest in Havana province - 11 percent - compared to about 4 percent in several of the eastern provinces.

"Being a delegate is a challenging job," Duarte remarked. "When you report to the local meetings every six months, people are very demanding. They expect you to have carried out the decisions from the previous meetings. They can always exercise their right to recall delegates."

Duarte said that the People's Council here has three full-time officials drawn from the area's 14 elected delegates - a president and two vice presidents. Playa's 103 neighborhood districts are grouped into eight People's Councils - bodies that were set up to deal with local issues more directly and rapidly than the larger municipal assemblies.

"The Special Period has created new social problems we have to grapple with," Duarte said of the work of the delegates, referring to the economic crisis precipitated in Cuba by the abrupt loss in 1990 of the bulk of its foreign trade with the disintegrating Soviet bloc regimes. "One problem is the material shortages. It used to be much easier to build and repair housing. Now a house must be in serious condition to get government aid. We try to distribute the aid equitably.

"We Cubans had been used to social equality. But now tourism, which we need to attract foreign currency, is one of the things that have created social differences. Some people, like hotel workers, have access to dollars; others don't. Some households are affected by the blackouts, while others always have electricity" because they are near a priority facility. One of the key facilities in the area is the modern Copacabana Hotel.

Duarte noted, "We had a lot of discussions about these problems in the community meetings. At first many people were opposed to the building of tourist hotels in their area. Eventually that changed. We even invited the hotel manager to the meetings to answer questions and to explain how the hotel's hard currency revenues help fund the country's health care, schools, and other necessities. Now people have a greater understanding of this question."

The delegate reported that the expanded tourist trade brought problems such as noise and prostitution to the area. "We worked with each of the four jineteras [the popular term for prostitutes] who lived in our neighborhood, one by one. Eventually, three of them got jobs and the fourth one left the country.

"Another complaint was the late-night noise from the hotel's disco, which bothered the neighbors. So we had some meetings and the hotel took steps to reduce the noise."  
 
 
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