Cubans Nominate Candidate Councilors to Municipal Assemblies

One of the most significant stages of the Cuban electoral process is currently taking place throughout the island, as voters have been nominating candidates to delegates or councilors to Municipal People´s Power Assemblies since February 24 up to March 25.

This nomination process will conclude on April 19, when the people will vote the councilors at partial elections, called by the Cuban Council of State, for a two-and-a-half years term of office, with a second round of elections scheduled for April 26 in those districts where none of the candidates garner over 50 percent of the votes, as established by the Cuban Electoral Law.

Nominations take place in neighborhood areas, where voters pick those candidates according to their merits and skills to carry out such work, which is not remunerated.

A characteristic of the nomination process is that neither the Communist Party nor the government system nominates any candidates; it is the voters who propose.

So far, more than 1 000 nomination assemblies have been carried out, according to Granma newspaper on Saturday.

If we take a brief look at the process in some Cuban territories we´ll learn that in western Mayabeque province, close to Havana, over 1 360 nomination meetings are scheduled to take place, while authorities report a large number of women and young people being nominated in such assemblies.

The vice-president of the local Electoral Commission in Mayabeque, Yadira Gonzalez said that they are setting up 778 voting stations for the election and preparing the biographical information of each nominated candidate so that voters have enough data about the councilor to vote. Such information is posted in public areas around the neighborhoods.

In Matanzas province, to the east of Havana, over 200 thousand voters have already nominated 787 candidates, out of whom 323 are women and 124 are 35 years old or younger.

Electoral Commission secretary Maria Antonia Suarez said that 2 thousand 906 nomination meetings are scheduled in the province, which pioneered this democratic process in 1974.

And if we go more to the east of Cuba, in Camaguey province the vice-president of the Electoral Commission Denia Morejon reported the nomination of over 1 500 candidates in the territory, with 300 women and 170 youths. More than 596 thousand Camaguey citizens have registered to vote, and out of that figure 17 thousand will vote for the first time after they turned 16 years old, the age established by the Cuban Constitution to have the right to vote.

In Holguin province, also in eastern Cuba, over 1 thousand 141 candidates have been nominated, with over 28 percent of them being women. Some 4 thousand 352 nomination assemblies are scheduled to be held in all 14 Holguin municipalities.
Interesting data come out of these figures, like the increasing participation of women and youths in public offices, an event that is also observed in other activities of Cuban society.

But as to the April 19 partial election themselves there is something new. This is the participation of local observers that will monitor the development of the vote in all territories.

These observers mostly are third and fifth year university students who will accompany the electoral process, said the president of the National Electoral Commission Alina Balseiro in announcing this new element.

Balseiro also said that the vote will take place in 12 thousand 589 electoral districts, 1 thousand 951 less than in the previous partial elections. This decrease was the result of a study on the characteristics of each territory, which revealed that there were districts with fewer than 100 and 200 inhabitants.

The fist electoral process in Revolutionary Cuba took place in 1976, and the turnout in all elections since then has been reported at 95 percent.