Cuba

As the January 20th Cuban national elections came to an end, after which Fidel Castro predictably announced his future status as a civilian with only his self-assigned responsibilities, Washington flat out rejected the results of the elections, claiming that, like all of Cuba’s post-1959 ballots, were illegitimate.

With the enactment of the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, the United States defiantly declared that the Cuban communist government does not “encourage free and fair elections to determine Cuba’s political future,” and that, “the Cuban people have demonstrated their yearning for freedom and their increasing opposition to the Castro government by risking their lives in organizing independent, democratic activities.”

With yesterday’s news that President Castro is immediately stepping down from his office and will not be a candidate to succeed himself, the Bush administration has not eased up on its contentions that the Cuban elections are rigged by the Cuban Communist Party and that Cubans do not elect their own representatives in an entirely open manner. Despite these claims, party officials and many ordinary Cubans remind their critics that the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba in 1992 declares that “all citizens, with the legal capacity to do so, have the right to take part in the leadership of the state. This can be either manifested directly or through their elected representatives” in the chambers of the “People’s Power, and to participate as prescribed by law in the periodic elections and people’s referendums through free, equal and secret vote.”