Both opposition candidates concede defeat in Cuban vote

Both opposition candidates concede defeat in Cuban vote
BY MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN AND ANNE-MARIE GARCIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
04/19/2015 9:57 PM 04/19/2015 9:57 PM

HAVANA
Two dissident candidates conceded defeat Sunday in Cuban local elections
that offered them a chance to become the first officials elected from
outside the Communist Party in 40 years.

Hildebrando Chaviano and Yuniel Lopez had been chosen as candidates by a
show of hands in Havana neighborhood nominating meetings and hoped to
win two of the 12,589 seats at stake in 168 municipal councils.

Both acknowledged they had no chance of winning after preliminary
results showed Chaviano in last place of four candidates and one of
Lopez's pro-government opponent with twice his vote.

Chaviano, 65, is a government attorney-turned-independent journalist and
Lopez, 26, is an unemployed member of a dissident political party.

A win by either would have been symbolically significant. Outside
observers said the fact that they made it past a first round of
show-of-hands voting on the neighborhood level reflected a government
desire to show at least the appearance of softening its monolithic
control of the political system in the wake of presidents Barack Obama
and Raul Castro historic announcement last year that they were declaring
detente after 50 years of Cold War enmity.

The dissidents and foreign press watched the vote-counting without
incident, although Lopez complained that he hadn't been able to watch
the full count in one polling place. He also said that government
backers had pressured people in his neighborhood to vote against him.

Cuba's municipal elections allow direct voting for delegates to
municipal assemblies that deal with local issues like sewers and street
repairs. The government controls the nomination and selection of
candidates for higher-level bodies including the national assembly,
which at least nominally chooses top national officials.

"The vote was clean," Chaviano said. "The people don't want change."

The count of Chaviano's race in Havana's relatively upscale Vedado
neighborhood was watched by an unusual number of residents, virtually
all in favor of pro-government candidates. After the vote count was read
out, they assembled into a well-organized crowd that shouted
pro-revolutionary slogans including "Love live Fidel!" after former
President Fidel Castro, who cast his ballot Sunday at his house in Havana.

Narciso Viera, a 71-year-old retired manual laborer, told an American
reporter that he voted against Chaviano because "he's a
counter-revolutionary, in the pay of your government for many years."

Chaviano's government-edited official candidate biography described him
as a counter-revolutionary, and mentioned that he had taken classes at
the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. Lopez's biography contained
similar disparaging information.

Backers of Julio Cesar Chaldran, who beat Lopez, marched through their
working-class neighborhood of Arroyo Naranjo singing the national anthem
and shouting "Long Live the Revolution!" and "Long Live Fidel!"

A group of Lopez's backers marched alongside shouting back their support
for the dissident.

"I'm very happy, despite the defeat, to see people supporting me,
despite the campaign against me," Lopez told The Associated Press.

Source: Both opposition candidates concede defeat in Cuban vote | Miami
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