[NYTr] Fidel Lampoons US Electoral System, Contrasted with Cuba's Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 10:20:08 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit [The title of this AP article was "Castro Lampoons US Elections," as in the lede. USA Today originally used that headline, but later changed it to "US Democracy" -NY Transfer] AP via USA Today - Oct 20, 2007 http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-10-20-castro_N.htm Castro lampoons U.S. democracy HAVANA (AP) b Fidel Castro lampooned U.S. elections Saturday as corrupted by corporate money aimed at "brainwashing" the few Americans who still bother to go to the polls. The Cuban leader's comments came a day before the communist-run island holds municipal elections featuring 37,258 candidates vying for 15,236 seats on local assemblies. Sunday begins a process that culminates with parliamentary elections next spring. Lawmakers could then decide to officially replace the ailing 81-year-old Castro with his younger brother Raul atop the island's supreme governing body, the Council of State. Fidel Castro, whose name will not be on any ballot Sunday, trumpeted his country's complicated, multitiered election cycle as "the antithesis of those held in the United States." "Being very rich or having the support of lot of money is what matters the most there," he wrote in a brief essay Saturday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma. The money is spent on "brainwashing and the creation of conditioned reflexes," he added. "Fewer and fewer citizens are going to the polls," wrote Castro, who has released essays known as "Reflections of the Commander in Chief" every few days since late March. "There is fraud, tricks, discrimination against ethnic minorities and even violence." Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgeries and ceding power to Raul in July 2006. Before falling ill, Castro had been Cuba's unchallenged leader since his revolution toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Although the elder Castro has looked lucid in recent videos, it is unlikely he is well enough to head to a polling place Sunday. Whether he will use some form of absentee ballot is unclear. Organized campaigning is forbidden in Cuba and only pictures and resumes of each candidate help voters choose. Children in school uniforms oversee polling places, and anyone 16 and over can vote. Participating is not mandatory, though failing to cast a ballot can draw unwanted attention in neighborhoods where Revolutionary Defense Committees keep tabs on residents. Tiny dissident groups b tolerated but dismissed by Cuba's government as mercenaries of the United States b plan to boycott the process, calling it undemocratic. Still, Castro said that well over 90% of eligible Cubans will vote. "It's hard to believe that this occurs in one of the 'dark corners of the world,' " Castro wrote, poking fun at official U.S. characterizations of Cuba. Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. *** Press TV (Iran) - Oct 20, 2007 http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=27910§ionid=3510207 Castro slams US electoral system Castro said fraud and violence rule US elections. Cuba's Fidel Castro has slammed US elections as a system based on fraud and violence in which the candidate with more money wins. "There, first you have to be very rich, or have an enormous amount of money behind you," AFP quoted Castro as saying in Cuban newspaper Granma. He said the electoral system in the US is governed by 'fraud, trickery, ethnic discrimination and even violence' and by the millions of dollars 'which come straight out of the coffers of the big monopolies'. "A candidate can win who actually got a minority of the popular vote," he added, referring to the last US presidential elections in 2000, when George W. Bush won despite lagging behind rival Al Gore in opinion polls. The 81-year-old Castro described Cuban elections as the 'antithesis' of those in the US calling on all Cubans to take part in Sunday's Municipal elections. More than 8.3 million Cubans are eligible to go to polls in which over 15,000 delegates to the municipal assemblies will be elected from among more than 37,000 candidates that have been nominated by over seven million Cubans. AKM/RA *** [Note this is from 2 days ago. The Gleaner is a CIA asset of years--long standing, and was heavily used during the smear camapaigns against Michael Manley in the old days. -NYTr] Reuters via The Jamaica Gleaner - Oct 18, 2007 http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20071018/carib/carib1.html No campaigns, only one party HAVANA (Reuters)--There are no campaigns or TV ads and only one party gets to field candidates in Sunday's local elections in communist Cuba, the first without ailing Fidel Castro in charge. Yet Cubans are expected to turn out massively to elect 15,236 municipal council members in a pyramidal voting process that will culminate in a new National Assembly in March. The legislature, a rubber-stamp parliament until now, could well become an important resonance chamber for debate on Cuba's future, as the 81-year-old Castro, who has led the country since a 1959 revolution, fades from the political stage. With Castro sidelined by illness and his low-profile brother Raul Castro running Cuba since last year, the Communist Party has urged young Cubans to stand in this year's elections to pump new blood into the country's political leadership. "We are young and fresh, the relievers, ready to guarantee that the Revolution continues," said JosC) Angel Garcia, 41, a carpenter who repairs doors and shutters of schools in dilapidated central Havana, Cuba's most crowded district. Under posters of Fidel and Raul Castro pinned to the walls of his workshop, and the slogan 'A better world is possible', Garcia says if elected, he will press for repairs of the drains in his neighbourhood, where sea water comes up the toilets when waves pound the Malecon sea wall a block away. Around the corner, five-term incumbent Felix Revilla, 72, is a veteran of the Sierra Maestra guerrilla war who sticks to the well-worn official line that all Cuba's problems are the fault of its arch-enemy, the United States. "We've endured great hardships due to the American blockade," Revilla said, blaming U.S. trade sanctions for Cuba's crumbling and overcrowded housing, poor public transport and the lack of consumer goods longed for by many Cubans. Sitting outside the Palace cinema, where the last picture show was in the mid-1960s and a homeless family now lives with pig and chickens, Revilla points at a crippled building across the street, promising, "We're going to build apartments there." VOTER APATHY The former Romeo and Julieta cigar factory, built in 1905, was declared too dangerous to live in two decades ago, but 31 families are still there because authorities have nowhere else to house them. Another 51 families were finally evacuated last month when a floor caved in. Angry occupants said Sunday's elections were pointless. "I won't vote for anyone. What for? Our delegate is useless. Nobody has helped us. Look at where I live," said Ivon Santana, 29, a hospital auxiliary. She and other women in the building accused Revilla, who heads a construction brigade, of selling on the black market materials handed out by the state, a charge he denied when he heard about it through an informant. Campaign publicity is limited to the candidate's photograph and CV stuck to shop windows. Candidates do not have to be card-carrying members of the Communist Party, but most are. Nominations were handled by the Committees to Defend the Revolution, neighbourhood watch groups set up by the government on almost every block in Cuba. Voting is not obligatory in Cuba, but officials expect 95 percent of the voting population to turn up at polling stations. Staying away can raise eyebrows in the neighbourhood. Cuba says its electoral system, set up in 1976, is the most democratic in the world because money cannot buy votes and delegates are chosen at the neighbourhood level and then get elected to the provincial and national assemblies. Critics call it a travesty of democracy that should be replaced by multi-party elections. "The Communist Party wants to make it look like a new generation is emerging," said Cuba's best-known dissident, Oswaldo Paya. "Cubans are tired of this system and want to see real change." * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================