2-16-05, 8:20am
“IN this country fraud cannot take place, that’s impossible, and we have the magic formula: making available to everyone information that in other parts is only handled by a clique,” affirmed Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly of People’s Power, speaking at the parliamentary public hearing marking the start of the voter registration period
In Cuba, this 30-day stage is the first part of the electoral process for delegates to the Municipal Assemblies. It guarantees that the name of every voter, automatically inscribed at the age of 16, duly appears on the constituency electoral roll.
“If there was an electoral roll with the characteristics of ours in many parts of the world, that would be the first step in a profound political revolution,” Alarcón stated, recalling that in Cuba this registration is assured from birth.
“People in Cuba are born with the right to vote as they are born with the right to free education and health. They are born with the right to become an elector on reaching the age of 16, for which they do not have to pay anything and there are no complicated procedures.”
Referring to the US electoral system and the presidential elections of last November, the Cuban parliamentary president asked: “In societies with centuries of supposed representative democracy, why is it that every time an election approaches, the battle for voter registration becomes one of the major tasks for those who wish to reform those societies?”
“Why is it that a few months ago in the United States the most famous artists organized themselves to undertake a national campaign to help thousands and thousands – nobody knows how many – of citizens to reach that first stage, to be recognized as electors. Why do people like Barbara Streisand and Michael Moore have to tour the country collecting funds and campaigning to help unknown numbers of US citizens who cannot voluntarily register themselves?”
For Cuban citizens, that part of the electoral process is so natural that its importance is not realized, Alarcón noted, stressing the value of that stage of profound and genuine democracy.
Pointing to the complexity of the US registration process, Alarcón explained to the Assembly the various procedures US citizens have to go through in order to obtain the right to vote.
“Nobody can become a registered voter because s/he wants to. You have to find out where the registration office is, you have to fill in an application form, you have to take photographs and they supposedly check to see if you are on the roll or not; you have to wait until they call you in again and in the case that you are accepted as an voter, they have to collect your papers. You have to pay for all that. And in addition, you have to lose pay, because all those steps have to be done on working days, within work time. To encourage workers to register? To facilitate their voluntary registration? Of course not! Exactly the opposite!”
NOBODY KNOWS HOW MANY PEOPLE VOTED IN OHIO
In this context, Alarcón pointed to the confusion that characterized the electoral process in the US state of Ohio: “Nobody knows how many people voted, or who voted, or whom they voted for! It was impossible to discover that. How easy fraud is – not to mention those little machines that did not register votes – when people do not know who is entitled to exercise their right to vote!”
At this point it must be confirmed that the electoral roll is as perfect as possible, Alarcón emphasized, commenting that elsewhere this process is in the hands of those who utilize it to ensure that they retain electoral positions.
“They achieve that miracle of the US election that the candidate who goes for reelection wins, except in super-exceptional circumstances,” he stated.
The parliamentary president noted that these will be the first elections in Cuba since George W. Bush passed the plan for a supposed “democratic transition” directed at the island’s annexation.
“Is it coincidental that when dealing with the electoral issue in their plan, particular significance is attached to these two points: registration and the nomination of candidates? Of course not! Because they are essential elements of genuine democracy that would disappear here if the US system was imposed.”
Recalling the famous defeat of the empire’s mercenary troops at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and in an allusion to the threats of war emanating from the United States, Alarcón made this call: “This process has to terminate in the greatest, most devastating Bay of Pigs, so that our people can announce to the empire that that is what it would encounter in the event of trying to seize the homeland and its democracy from us!”
The first round of the partial elections to elect delegates to the Municipal Assemblies of People’s Power take place on April 17. The second round is scheduled for April 24.
From Granma International
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