These are intense days. Until March 24, the 470 candidates for deputies to the National Assembly of People's Power are touring the territories and exchanging with representatives of different social, labor and student sectors of each locality, prior to the national elections.
In Santa Clara, in dialogue with the people, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, together with the other nominees for that territory, presented ideas that are the essence of the Cuban system, and which Granma newspaper took from the website of the Presidency.
-We are facing the most important political process we will experience this year, in the midst of the continuing world crisis, domestic difficulties and the intensified blockade by the U.S. government, which remains in place and will not change.
-Our model was inspired and built on the concept of true and genuine democracy, developed by Fidel, and not on that of hypocritical democracy, exclusively for the privileged sectors, which the capitalist countries have.
-Our democracy is perfectible, that is why we are betting on becoming more democratic, and demonstrating that democracy has nothing to do with unipartisanship or multipartisanship.
In assessing the discrediting campaigns against the Cuban democratic system, such as the attacks on our candidacy commissions, in charge of making the proposals to be approved by the municipal assemblies, and which are made up of, led by the Cuban Workers' Central, the president abounded in the fallacies of those processes in the countries whose model they are trying to impose on us.
-Who is postulating in the United States? The elites of their two parties do it, and they do it not because of the merits of those people, but because of the money they have to pay for electoral campaigns where some are pitted against others, taking out "all the dirty laundry" in a spectacle in which a lot of money runs. And then they go to votes that almost nobody understands, as when Trump, who got fewer votes than Hillary Clinton at the polls, became president, and where, sometimes, less than 50% vote. And that model is the one they want to impose on us.
-Who are the members of our nominating committees? Here they are made up of representatives of our mass organizations, of our civil society, and are they more legitimate or less legitimate than the elite of a party, are they more inclusive or less inclusive than the elite of a party?
-And how is it that our candidacy commissions form the succession pools to integrate the proposals for deputies to the National Assembly? Well, they do it by talking to many people, in plenary sessions?
-How does the Federation of University Students form its proposals to be presented to the commissions? The federation goes classroom by classroom, in all the universities, asking for proposals and then takes them to the plenary sessions of each of the universities, and then to those of the provinces and then to their national council.
-Isn't this more inclusive and more democratic than what is done in the world? Isn't it transparent? And this is done by each organization of our civil society that is part of the candidacy commissions.
-And who are the members of these candidacies? In the country, the pool was formed by more than 19,000 people; only here in Villa Clara there were 870 people to reach a candidacy of 32 from the province, who will be voted by the people to integrate the National Assembly.
-Our democracy is not conceived with electoral campaigns either. Nobody comes here to Santa Clara to say that they are going to fix the Central Highway, to fix the streets of the José Martí neighborhood. No, the candidates come here to represent the people, to work on the economic-social strategy that the country has to solve the current problems, to stimulate us all to produce more and import less.
-The Tenth Legislature will not be a National Assembly in which the deputies will come to solve the problems. These will be solved by the link between the deputies and the people, because the people are the main protagonists. We would go to that Assembly to represent the people.
While elaborating on the process of making up proposals and nominations for candidates for deputies, the First Secretary reminded:
-The Parliament, as established by the Constitution of the Republic, has to be conformed up to 50% by constituency delegates, from the grassroots, and these, first, have to be proposed in the neighborhood by their neighbors;
-then, secondly, they have to be elected at the ballot box by the voters of the district, in the elections to form the municipal assemblies;
-then, as a third step, they have to be proposed in the plenary sessions of the mass and student organizations to integrate the proposals of the candidacy commissions and to be accepted by them;
-then, as a fourth filter, as a third step, they have to be proposed in the plenary sessions of the mass and student organizations to integrate the proposals of the candidacy commissions and to be accepted by them;
-later, as a fourth filter, they have to be presented individually to the members of the municipal assemblies;
-then, in the plenary session of the assembly, they must receive the positive vote of more than 50 % of the members of the assemblies,
-and finally, as a sixth step, after their approval as candidates, they must exchange with the population, to explain, to listen and to go to the polls for their districts, where they will be elected or not.
-Our deputies to the National Assembly are submitted six times to popular decision processes. Does that happen in the U.S.? Does that happen in the other democracies they want to impose on us?
Regarding the call for a united vote in the elections to the National Assembly, Díaz-Canel explained that this is done so that all candidates, whether they are more or less known by the people, are on equal terms, because they all have enormous merits, despite the fact that some are less known than others. Because for the ANPP we are not choosing between several to one, in these elections the interest is that everyone can be elected and everyone can be represented.
-The strategy of the united vote -he said- is a revolutionary strategy, but it is not an imposition either, whoever understands the reason for the united vote, does it for everyone; whoever does not, does it selectively, but the important thing is that everyone can be elected, so that no one is diminished or at a disadvantage because he is more or less known. And that is not democratic, that is not more democratic than the other thing they want to impose on us?
-And it is this, our democratic system, which they want to destroy. And they want to do it, first, by blockading us, so that we have nothing, and that this economic asphyxiation leads us to break with the Revolution; second, by supporting this with a brutal media campaign to discredit the Cuban Revolution, its political and democratic system.
-The Cuban democracy, however, despite all the campaigns of its enemies, is a good democracy, it is truly a democracy, because it is the power of the people; the people nominate and the people elect, and the people are participating, and not only in the elections, but in everything that is done; and in recent times we have been insisting on being even more democratic.
He pointed out, by the way, as an example, the popular consultations and the referendums, that is, two mechanisms of democracy, he said, with which the Constitution of the Republic and the Family Code were determined.
-All this is very rare to see in the world, and we did it in the worst moment we were living economically, as now we are also going to elections in a complicated moment.
-The next national elections are a feat of courage, but they are also a feact of democracy, which includes not violating the schedules established by the Constitution of the Republic due to situations we were going through.
-And all this, all our democracy, is what they want to dismantle. That is why, more than voting for the deputies to the ANPP, participating in these elections and casting a majority united vote, more than anything else, what we are defending is the political system of the Cuban Revolution, we are defending socialism, we are defending the survival of the Revolution.
-In the face of imperialist logic, we have to put socialist logic before it. And what is socialist logic? More social justice, as much social justice as possible.
Translated by ESTI
