Elections in Cuba - The Never-Ending Farce

Elections in Cuba: The Never-Ending Farce / Jeovany Jimenez Vega
Posted on April 23, 2015

Jeovany J. Vega, 19 APril 2015 — When on this day, Sunday, 19 April
2015, the last poll closes, nothing transcendent will occur. Despite the
statistics manipulated by the newspaper Granma and its libels about an
electorate that presumably will have gone to the polls freely and
massively to give its "absolute support" to the Revolution, at this
stage that never-ending story will deceive very few people.

Irregularities at the polls; ballots that can only be marked "with
pencil!" so that they can later be adulterated and thus avoid generating
inconvenient statistics; candidacy commissions controlled by the only
legal party in Cuba (the Communist one) who handpick the president of
every assembly from the municipal level on up to the Council of State:
assemblies all of which from San Antonio on the west to Maisí on the
east will decide nothing outside the line approved by the one
dictatorial party, and they will question nothing, but rather during
their time in office they will do nothing more than unanimously approve
every "guidance" emanating from Olympus.

The people of Cuba know only too well that they cannot expect anything
new from this farce, that this scheme is all played out and will never
offer new paths, that it is only more of the same. Thus I will not beat
a dead horse but rather today I will reflect on one detail that emerged
weeks ago on various online sites: in an event practically without
precedent, two dissidents from Havana managed to be nominated as
candidates as potential delegates to the National Assembly of People's
Power by their respective districts – something almost unheard-of in
today's Cuba.

Even so, Hildelbrando Chaviano, from the Plaza de la Revolución
municipality, and Yuniel López O'Farrill, from the Arroyo Naranjo
municipality, had to resign themselves to being branded as
"counterrevolutionaries" in their published candidate biographies, as
being part of what the nomenklatura calls "splinter groups," among other
pejorative names — outright calumnies and propagandist accusations.

But beyond it being certain that these candidates in effect openly
oppose that concept of "Revolution" sustained by the Demagogues-in-Chief
of the Communist Party of Cuba, I ask myself: And the other candidates,
what about them?

Perhaps it will not be published in the rest of the biographies, for
example, that a certain candidate, despite being an "honorable"
Communist militant, also increasingly embezzles the resources of the
state-owned enterprise that he runs?

Or that other one, a fervent member of a Rapid Response Brigade and
participant in multiple repudiation rallies "in defense of the
Revolution," has been expelled from various positions because of
continued stealing?

Or that this one, always the enthusiast in any Mayday parade that is
organized, nonetheless also manages to loot any state-run warehouse that
falls into his clutches?

Or that this dedicated Party comrade does not live off of her salary,
but rather thanks to the natural talent that her prostitute-daughter has
deployed in a chupa-chupa — something she is well aware of and approves?

Or that this old CDR-member, so combative in denouncing any countryman
who enters his field of vision, yet he tolerates the sale of
black-market tobacco in his own home?

Or perhaps that a certain veteran of the glorious Combatants Association
does not live off the absurd pension "guaranteed" by his "Revolution,"
but off the remittances arriving from that troubled and brutal country
to the North that he despises?

Or that this other functionary from the provincial party lives like a
millionaire thanks to the shamelessness of her husband, one of the
thousands of thieves legalized by the General Customs office at the
Havana airport?

To enumerate the list of moral duplicities and corruptions would make
interminable the biographies of a good portion of the current candidates
— and it would be even more rotten were we to ascend the ranks from the
municipal to national levels.

The publication of these biographies filled with distorted information
and morbidly dissected — specifically in the context in which they try
to dissuade potential voters — well deserves legal action from a
respected electoral authority, even the prosecutor's office — but this
would only be possible if we lived under the Rule of Law, and never in
the totalitarian Cuba of today.

At any rate, if this were about competing on a level playing field for
the vote of the electorate, according to what is established by law, it
would be very healthy to air everyone's dirty laundry and expose their
shit equally (and I do not say that the militancy or sense of civic
responsibility of Hildelbrando and Yuniel are such).

If this were to occur, I assure you that the stink would rise high and
spread far in a country where half a century of absurd laws and legal
limos have not left barely a place for honesty and individual prosperity
to be sheltered under the law.

Let us be absolutely certain of this: today in Cuba, the "voting" will
be done by millions of hypocrites and criminals.

Source: Elections in Cuba: The Never-Ending Farce / Jeovany Jimenez Vega
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