[NYTr] Mass Participation in Cuban Elections
 
Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:39:00 -0500 (CDT)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) - Oct 19, 2007
http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles

Mass Participation in Cuban Elections

By Angel Rodriguez Alvarez
AIN Special Service

The Cuban people will go to the polls on Sunday in the first round of 
elections to vote for the delegates to the Municipal Assembly in 
compliance with the country's Electoral Law approved on October 29th, 
1992.

The island's electoral system is designed to incorporate ways of 
guaranteeing a more direct democratic and participatory exercise of 
citizen's right to vote.

The current system promotes the real participation of the citizens and 
effective relationships with the candidates, from the moment they are 
nominated up to the control mechanisms that guarantees those nominated 
to carry out their work, or otherwise are revoked by the people 
themselves.

This principle will be completed on the third Sunday of October when 
the electoral colleges are opened to elect 15,236 delegates from among 
the 37,328 nominated in 50,760 neighbourhood assemblies where over 7 
million citizens attended representing 84 percent of all those over 16 
years of age.

Statistics show that elections on the island constitute a singular 
massive democratic exercise of its citizens.

In addition to the high number of voters in previous elections always 
registering over 95 percent, the amount of citizens that voluntarily 
work during weeks before the elections in the organization is also 
always high.

Another example:  Each one of the 37,280 colleges that are made up by a 
president and four more members, which includes 186,400 Cuban citizens, 
plus another half a million students from primary and secondary schools 
that symbolically guard the ballot box.

We should also add the members and volunteers of the electoral 
commissions of each district and municipality in charge of the 
organization and control of the voting.  Without exaggeration we can 
say that close to one million Cuban citizens are ready to carry out a 
transparent and quality act of democracy.

 From 1976 to date, the Cuban people have repeated this experience 
contributing to creating a participatory culture that goes beyond the 
real intervention of the individuals in the election of their 
government representatives.

The Cuban electoral experience, undergoing continuous perfection, has 
shown that democratic development, in order for it to be genuine, needs 
to be based in the creative richness of a civil society.
                                 *
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