Cuba - 1976 Elections
Elections were held 02 November 1976 for all the members of the Parliament envisaged under the new socialist Constitution of 1976. The unicameral Parliament of Cuba, the National Assembly of People's Power, is composed of 481 deputies elected by the country's Municipal Assemblies of People's Power for 5 years.
All Cuban citizens over the age of 16, except those who are mentally disabled or who have committed a crime, are entitled to vote for the country's representative institutions. All citizens who are at least 16 years of age and have full political rights can be elected; the required age for the National Assembly is 18 years.
Delegates to the 169 Municipal Assemblies of People's Power are popularly chosen, being declared elected if, in the constituency concerned, they received more than half of the total votes cast. Deputies are elected by these delegates from candidates put forward by the country's Communist Party and mass organizations. The number of deputies per municipality depends on its population; there is one for every 20,000 inhabitants or fraction above 10,000, so that all municipalities are represented by at least one deputy.
Once elected, National Assembly members continue working at their existing jobs; according to the Constitution, the status of deputy does not entail personal privileges or economic benefits of any kind.
The 1976 parliamentary elections represented the final phase of the " institutionalization of the Cuban revolution " or installation of a new governmental system of " popular power ", begun in December 1975, when the Cuban Communist Party adopted a socialist Constitution for the country. 37 n Cuba During the next 12 months, national elections were held for the first time since 1958 for members of 169 municipal assemblies, which in their turn elected 14 provincial assemblies and the National Assembly of People's Power. More than 5,000,000 citizens had gone to the polls for the October municipal elections, choosing from among almost 30,000 candidates.
Candidates for the 481 Assembly seats were nominated by the Cuban Communist Party and mass organizations. Some 14% of these were women. Among the elected deputies, 55.5% were also delegates to the municipal assemblies and 22.2% were women.
At its inaugural session on December 2-3, the newly-elected Assembly selected Dr. Fidel Castro, who had headed the 1959 Revolution and had hitherto been the Prime Minister, as President of the new State Council (an executive body appointed by the National Assembly to carry out the latter's functions in between its semi-annual sessions). Dr. Castro thus simultaneously holds the position of Head of State and Head of Government.
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