Cubans voted Sunday to renew their National Assembly for the next five years in an uneventful and unsurprising vote, with 470 candidates for 470 seats, while turnout, the only issue in the ballot, was not yet known.
The 23,648 polling stations closed at 7:00 p.m. local time, one hour later than previously announced by the electoral authorities.
According to the latest provisional figures available, at 2:00 p.m. the turnout, the stake of the ballot for opponents of power, was 60.14%, according to the National Electoral Council.
Eight million voters were called upon to ratify the 470 candidates, 263 women and 207 men, mostly members of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC, unique), destined to occupy the 470 seats of the National Assembly of People’s Power.
In Cuba, where polls have been held since 1976, voting is not compulsory, but opposition is prohibited.
Cuban voters had two options on their ballot: tick the name of one or more candidates in the constituency or tick the “vote for all” option, which implies support for the 470 candidates.
“I voted for all, because despite the needs, the difficulties that this country may have, I cannot conceive of giving my vote”, while abstaining, “to those who want to crush us, trample us, the Yankees!” Carlos Diego Herrera, 54, told AFP at a polling station in Havana, referring to the United States, which has imposed an embargo on the island since 1962.
Among the 470 candidates, nominated by parliamentary and municipal commissions, include the president and first secretary of the PCC, Miguel Diaz-Canel, 62, and the former leader Raul Castro, 91.
“With the united vote [pour tous]we defend the unity of the country, the unity of the revolution, our future, our socialist Constitution”, declared Mr. Diaz-Canel, after having voted in the city of Santa-Clara, 280 km from Havana, where he is a candidate.
This “for all” vote should also make it possible to increase the legitimacy of the candidates who must obtain more than 50% of the votes to be elected.
” Mathematical “
While voter turnout has steadily declined over the past few years – 68.5% in the municipal elections in November; 74% in September during the referendum on the Family Code; 90% in the referendum on the Constitution in 2019 – the candidates led an unusual grassroots campaign to collect the grievances of Cubans.
Several weeks before the vote, President Miguel Diaz-Canel traveled no less than ten times to his hometown of Santa Clara to mobilize voters. The meetings between candidates and citizens were widely broadcast by state television.
But this mobilization was not enough to convince a young 19-year-old Cuban, employee of a kiosk in the capital and who did not wish to give her name to AFP. “I don’t think the vote […] will bring about positive change for our country. I think it’s a waste of time.”
This legislative election comes at a time when Cuba is going through its worst economic crisis in 30 years, with galloping inflation and an unprecedented wave of migration, under the combined effect of the consequences of the pandemic, the strengthening of American sanctions and the country’s economic weaknesses. .
Deprived of candidates, the opposition had called for abstention on social networks.
Dissident Manuel Cuesta Morua, a member of the Council for Democratic Transition in Cuba, wrote on Twitter to be attentive to “the electoral mathematics of the government”.
“At 9:00 a.m., he says 18.2% of the electorate has voted. At 11:00 a.m., 41.66%. This means that in less than two hours the participation has increased by 23.46%. Impossible ! The polling stations are empty,” denounced the opponent.
He then said that his house and that of another activist “were under siege” by state security, when they wanted to attend the counting at polling stations.
In the second half, Miguel Diaz-Canel, the first president to lead the country after the years of power of the brothers Fidel and Raul Castro, should be a candidate for re-election before the deputies for a second and final term.