First modification:
Cubans were called to the polls on Sunday March 26 to renew the National Assembly of Popular Power, the country’s unicameral parliament. 470 candidates opted for the 470 seats. In the Cuban one-party system, none of these candidates represents the opposition. The provisional participation was 70.33%, according to the National Electoral Council, 8.23 points less than the parliamentarians of 2018 but higher than the municipal ones of last November (63.85%)
With RFI’s special envoy to Havana, Stefanie Schüler
The Castro authorities usually describe the elections as a “great popular party.” But after the vote, the feelings of Cubans were, to say the least, contradictory.
Whether or not they voted on Sunday, the inhabitants of the capital agree on one thing: the country is going through a serious economic crisis, which seriously affects the living conditions of the population and that is precisely why this mother of a family voted for the candidates communists.
“The representatives will not be able to improve the economic situation of the country overnight, but I believe that the government is making efforts to resolve this crisis,” he affirms.
“Today Cuba is a different country than it was five or ten years ago, thanks to the measures adopted to allow private entrepreneurship or improve the job offer in state companies,” he adds.
People under 30 are not interested in voting
“To tell the truth, I would like to vote for someone who truly represents me, for someone who does not come to parliament to obey and say yes to everything,” explains a student who did not go to vote.
Since electoral campaigns are prohibited in Cuba, he regrets not knowing the candidates and criticizes the absence of a political program. For this young man, Parliament is nothing more than a recording chamber.
“Cubans under the age of 30 or 25 are no longer interested in elections. Young people know that nothing will change, that everything will remain the same, so it will not be a solution to their problems,” he says, adding that he will not trust the abstention figures reported by the government.
