Call to Vote “D” in Cuban Elections

Call to Vote "D" in Cuban Elections
September 13, 2012

HAVANA TIMES — Supporters of the Cuban group Participative and
Democratic Socialism (SPD) are calling on citizens to take part in "an
affirmative action for democracy" in the upcoming general elections to
take place in October.

The SPD group includes Pedro Campos, Miguel Arencibia, Hibert García,
Ramón García, Félix Guerra, Orlando Ocaña and other participant.

The following is the HT translation of the statement issued by SPD:

An Affirmative Action for Democracy

Cuba will soon be holding elections for municipal delegates, and later
for provincial delegates and national deputies. Yet democratic deficits
hinder the electoral law 72/1992 and the overall current political
system. The growing consensus is that this system must be democratized.

President Raul Castro himself said that what's necessary is "more
democracy for the party and society" – words that should be honored. We
don't expect this to be done by others; we will have to honor those
words ourselves. Let's do something concrete after first considering the
following.

To democratize the system, three basic demands are key, ones that are
shared by many democrats, pacifists, socialists and Cuban patriots:

1- The election of the president and vice president must be by direct
vote and secret ballot by all citizens.

2- The government must ratify all signed human rights conventions,
readjust national legislation to reflect these and respect all civil
rights and liberties, political and economic rights, and social and
cultural rights of all Cubans – especially freedom of expression,
movement, association and the discussion of ideas

3- Laws affecting all citizens must be submitted to a popular referendum.

How to promote these

The electoral law contains valid elements for its democratization:

1- The vote is secret

2- Nothing prevents casting a blank ballot

3- Voters can be present at the vote counting at polling stations
(Paragraph D, Article 4, Law 72)

Up until now, however, those people disaffected with the political and
electoral system have chosen not to go to the polls, cast blank ballots
or to annul them. According to official data, the sum of these three
categories was 508,553 voters in the 2003 elections and 735,581 in those
of 2008. The non-affiliated protest votes were 660,990 (2003) and
705,440 (2008). Combining these figures for the last two elections, we
come up with 1,169,543 popular votes of no confidence in 2003 and a
larger figure of 1,441,021 votes in 2008.

If this sentiment could reach a consensus, these voters could succeed at
unifying and identifying themselves with those three demands, which
could be symbolized by a "D" (for "democracy") written on their ballots
and then counted independently. We would then know the number of voters
in favor of democratization.

As for Cubans abroad, who are excluded from the system, most of them
would probably vote for those three demands for democratization. If we
added that outside vote (also identified and counted) to the internal
vote for democratization, a significant percentage of Cubans would
reveal themselves as being in support of democratizing the current
political and electoral system. And no one could ignore this.

For some people, elections and voting allow for official manipulation,
but what really makes this manipulation possible is people not turning
out at the polls, casting blank ballots or annulling them, and — above
all — not participating in the vote count, which is legal. For others,
participating in elections legitimizes the electoral process. And it is
indeed legitimized by a high turnout, but the reasons don't matter.

Some people vote to not be "marked" (singled out) or to avoid
"retaliation." But no one will be "marked," nor would they be subject to
victimization for turning out to vote. The vote is secret. Voting "D" in
the blank column would allow us to know how many people support
democratization, whether or not the election commission annuls that vote.

Flowing from this analysis and convinced that there can be no socialism
without democracy, some of us supporters of SPD (the Participatory and
Democratic Socialism platform) will participate in the elections, but we
will do this so that we can vote "D" (symbolizing the three demands for
democratizing the political and electoral system) and we will then
participate in the counting of votes at the polls. All advocates of
democracy and human rights have the real opportunity to do so.

"Vote D" isn't a campaign. It isn't directed against anyone. It's not
illegal. It's not a boycott. It isn't civil disobedience and it's not
violent.

It is affirmative action for democratization.

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