Cuba - Leader of Dissident Group Retains Her Post After Challenge

Cuba: Leader of Dissident Group Retains Her Post After Challenge
By VICTORIA BURNETTMARCH 11, 2015

Cuba's most high-profile opposition group, the Ladies in White, voted
Wednesday to keep their leader, Berta Soler, in a referendum prompted by
complaints that she was autocratic and should resign. The challenge to
Ms. Soler's leadership exposed divisions within the group as it grapples
with the changing relationship between Cuba and the United States and
the group's shifting status among Cuba's increasingly diverse opposition
groups. Ms. Soler said by telephone that she had won 180 of a total of
201 votes cast. Sixteen members of the group voted against her, and the
remaining ballots were blank or annulled, she said. More than 30 members
did not vote. Several members called for Ms. Soler's resignation after a
video emerged in which some in the group surrounded a member,
Alejandrina García de la Riva, in December, waving their fists and
chanting, "Down traitor." The Ladies in White was formed in 2003 to
protest the imprisonment of 75 dissidents. Most of the dissidents have
since been released, but the group continues to march weekly to demand
democratic reform and freedom of speech.

Source: Cuba: Leader of Dissident Group Retains Her Post After Challenge
- NYTimes.com -
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/world/americas/cuba-leader-of-dissident-group-retains-her-post-after-challenge.html?_r=0