For a Parliament Without a Nominating Committee

For a Parliament Without a Nominating Committee
REINALDO ESCOBAR, La Habana | Marzo 16, 2015

The National Assembly of People's Power, or what foreign journalists
simplified as the Cuban Parliament, consists of some 612 members. None
of them performed any action to achieve their seat; all were taken by
surprise when Nominating Committee announced that their name would be on
the list of proposed members. Voters who voted for them either were
forced to choose between one or the other, but all were approved in a
block of 612 candidates. One for each existing post.

About half of these candidates were selected by the Nominating Committee
from a list of nearly 15,000 district delegates around the country. The
rest were "taken" by this Committee from among other personalities who,
without being grassroots delegates, stood out for their work in the
arts, science or sports, or for accumulating certain historical,
political or military merits.

The Committee is careful to maintain an appropriate ratio between young
and old; men and women; whites, blacks and mestizos; workers, peasants
and intellectuals; and, of course, making sure the fifteen provinces are
equally represented. No one can deny that the Parliament is a
representative range of our society, at least from the point of view of
age, gender, race, occupation and regional profile.

Where there is no plurality is in the field of political opinions. In
fact, the voters don't know the candidates' views and only assume they
must be "revolutionary" because the Committee selected them.

How will this diversity be interpreted when the new Electoral Law that
has been announced is enacted?

First, the Nominating Committee should be eliminated. Article 68 of the
electoral law provides that:

The Nominating Committees is made up of representatives from the Cuban
Workers Center, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the
Federation of Cuban Woman, the National Association of Small Farmers,
the University Students Federation, and the Secondary Students
Federation, appointed by the respective national, provincial and
municipal boards, at the request of the National, Provincial and
Municipal Electoral Commissions.

It is this composition of the Commission that allows the official
propagandists to claim that it is not the Communist Party that proposes
the candidates. What is not explained is that most of the top leaders of
these organizations (which appoint their representatives to the
Commission) are at least members of the Central Committee of the Party
and that in the statutes of each of these entities is a clause which
requires fidelity to the highest political body.

In the nearly 40 years of the National Assembly of People's Power's
existence there is no trace of a single adverse vote on a law or a
measure proposed by the government, nor has anyone registered any
significant argument; is not possible to identify trends, wings, sectors
or anything of that kind. In voting, unanimity is the rule; votes
against, the few exceptions.

If the new Law modifies this detail, among others, to enter Parliament
you should have to have something of your own to propose; if there came
to be a deputy who gets to this place for people who think alike and who
raised his or her voice or hand in favor of a new idea, the other
roosters in this pen would crow…

In a nation where almost everyone has their own point of view but where
few have the courage to express it publicly, especially if it deviates
from the official line; in a nation that has spent 63 years without
civil liberties, where there are at least three generations domesticated
under tight ideological tutelage; in a nation like that there will be no
democratic experience of a real Parliament just because a new electoral
law is enacted.

However, in this house of cards, the slightest movement of a deck can
have unexpected consequences in a country where so many people dream of
profound changes.

Source: For a Parliament Without a Nominating Committee -
http://www.14ymedio.com/englishedition/For-Parliament-Without-Nominating-Committee_0_1743425655.html