By Iroel Sánchez on February 27, 2023
The liberal democracy that is sold to us as a model is conceived for the reproduction of the capitalist system and, when in spite of that, thanks to the wear and tear of the system itself and the popular mobilizations, an alternative that may represent a threat to the oligarchic interests reaches the Government, there are the other “powers” to strike judicial, media, parliamentary and even military blows in defense of what they consider should be the natural order of things. Everything is tried, from the assassination of a candidate, the unjust imprisonment of another, or the threat of the banks, if it is not possible to prevent a leftist from governing and making leftist policies as he promised to do for capital democracy is only elections in which money and the media intervene in a decisive way, never in power of the majorities but always dependent on advertisers and shareholders. They are processes carried out in the midst of enormous economic, educational, cultural and communicational inequalities, where representatives of the economic elites organized in political parties settle their differences in a great media spectacle to obtain, first financing, and then votes.
In Cuba, without the intervention of money or any party, it is the neighbors, organized in neighborhood assemblies, who nominate candidates, who then go to a ballot up to eight in each district and by secret ballot of the citizens elect a delegate to the Municipal Assembly, which is the highest body of power in each territory. It is this Municipal Assembly, made up of delegates elected directly by the people, not the elite of a party that makes lists depending on its interests and financiers, who vote for a candidate for deputies to the National Assembly for which the people must again vote directly and secretly to form the highest powers of the nation.
It is a system that may still be perfectible, but it is that of a country without illiteracy, with nine compulsory grades of education, where health and education are universal guarantees and citizens do not have to pay with their vote favors to politicians for access to these services, as it happened before 1959 and still happens in many countries. The Cuban electoral exercise is closer to the democratic ideal advocated but not practiced by those who attack Cuba.
And beyond elections, the Cuban society has many other forms of democratic participation and defense of the rights of workers, students and the inhabitants of the communities, superior to those of capitalism. A participation that, although in its concrete practice may suffer from formalism and deviations, which society itself and its leaders criticize, has nothing to do with the deformations caused by the economic interests that corrupt and dominate politics in most capitalist societies.
Source: La Pupilia Insomne, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – US