Cubans to vote Family Code on popular referendum

HAVANA, Cuba, Sep 25 (ACN) After an extensive process of popular and specialized consultation, updating by experts and debate in various spaces, this Sunday the Family Code will be submitted to the referendum that will determine its entry into force if it receives the majority vote of the people for yes.

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, described the legal text as a monumental work, due to the amount of knowledge and experiences that make it up and the singularity of having turned love into law.
The President assured, in a recent exchange with people linked to the norm, that participating in this referendum is a civic act of great importance, which Cubans should attend with a sense of duty and civic and social responsibility.

We are about to make an unprecedented revolutionary leap in the field of family law, said Mariela Castro Espín, director of the National Center for Sex Education.

Oscar Silvera Martínez, Minister of Justice, highlighted that Cuba will be the first country to submit a Family Code to popular consultation and referendum.

The Minister explained that the Code became Law number 156 when the National Assembly of People's Power (Cuban Parliament) approved it last July, but for its full validity it needs to be approved in a referendum with the positive vote of the majority of the population.

Alina Balseiro Gutiérrez, president of the National Electoral Council (CEN), explained in recent days that the conditions are in place for voters to exercise their sovereign right to vote freely, directly and secretly this Sunday.

She commented that posters were distributed indicating the location of the polling stations, structures that have the ballots and lists, which was verified in the dynamic test on September 18.

On September 18, the overseas voting was successfully carried out, when more than 22 thousand Cuban citizens who for official reasons were outside the country exercised their vote, data that will be taken into account by the CEN for the final result.

The popular referendum will take place today in 24,860 polling stations, 224 of them are special (located in hospitals, terminals, hotels and places with a large concentration of people to facilitate access to the vote), and 1,823 are located in private homes.


According to CEN data, there is an average of 342 people per polling station, in a total of 12,635 constituencies in the national territory, and it is estimated that more than eight million Cubans will go to the polls.