Separation of Powers, Parliamentary Debut and National Capitol in Cuba

Separation of Powers, Parliamentary Debut and National Capitol in Cuba
in 2018 / Juan Juan Almeida
Posted on March 14, 2015

As has already been announced, the VII Cuban Communist Party Congress
will be held in April 2016. From the moment of the announcement until
the first quarter of this year municipal and provincial assemblies have
been held, charts have been prepared, members have been briefed and
documents have been approved that have still not been released.

It has also been announced that a new election law, with some changes to
current statutes that have been in effect since 1992, will leave the
door half-open to future constitutional reform.

The Cuban government has demonstrated over and over that it does not act
with transparency, much less with improvisation. On the contrary, it
meticulously follows an elaborate script in which withholding
information from its citizens is essential.

To avoid being surprised by the how, when and why, it is worth asking if
the Cuban government is preparing the groundwork for an overhaul of its
own political system.

Based on what has already been published, the new electoral law will
govern the elections of 2017. Interestingly, it will not only be when
the year the men and women who will govern the island after February
2018 will be elected but will also mark the end of the controversial
ten-year term of General Raul Castro who — as he himself proposed — will
give up the Cuban presidency.

On any streetcorner of the world one can proselytize, arouse awareness,
seek financing, organize marches and so forth. But I am inclined to
think that real political opposition only takes in parliament. That is
why I am trying to catch the attention of those who can now demonstrate
they are truly worthy of the title "leaders of the opposition" because —
as I have often heard — this legislation will extend to the entire
country an experiment that for some time now has been quietly carried
out (with some success) in the western provinces Mayabeque and
Artemesia. It represents a new model of governance which involves a
separation between the leadership of the party and that of local
governments.

The current electoral law lays out the procedure for the election of
deputies and for the selection of members of the Council of State as
well as for it president, who also serves as chief-of-state and
head-of-government of the Republic of Cuba. Why diminish the powers of
the next president? Because military leaders do not want happening in
Havana what happened in Moscow under Mikhail Gorbachev.

Of course, multi-party democracy is not an option in Cuba but let's
acknowledge that this could be a step towards dismantling the monopoly
on power that the Communist Party has exercised for more than half a
century and could facilitate the election of citizens (not party
members) to the ranks of deputies in Cuba's National Assembly of
People's Power.

It should be noted that the Cuban parliament, with 612 members, is the
largest legislative body in the hemisphere. It is ridiculous, even
laughable, that a country with little more than 11 million people has a
legislative body that exceeds the number of members in the U.S. House of
Representatives. The new electoral law will reduce the number of
parliamentarians both because it makes sense and because, as the song by
Puerto Rico's Gran Combo goes, "there's too many people for this bed."
Today's 612 deputies simply will not fit in the renovated semi-circular
chamber in the national capitol that will house the next assembly.*

*Translator's note: The Capitolio, or capitol building, was the seat of
Cuba's legislature until the Cuban Revolution. Until recently it housed
the Cuban Academy of Sciences. It has been undergoing restoration and
renovations in anticipation of serving as the seat of Cuba's National
Assembly.

Source: Separation of Powers, Parliamentary Debut and National Capitol
in Cuba in 2018 / Juan Juan Almeida | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/separation-of-powers-juan-juan-almeida/