Cuba 2023 Elections
On 19 April 2023, the newly elected National Assembly was to meet to elect the Council of State and the President and Vice President of the Republic. Cuba's government managed to mobilize voters on 26 March 2023 for National Assembly elections, the results of which were a foregone conclusion, as it pushed back against a recent abstentionist trend in the communist-ruled nation. As many as eight million eligible voters selected from the 470 candidates on the ballot – 263 women and 207 men – were vying for the 470 seats in the congress. But what was really in play was the number of Cubans refusing to vote. The opposition had called on citizens to abstain, with one opposition Twitter account branding the vote a farce. Voting is not obligatory and abstention has risen steadily in recent years.
Cuba is an authoritarian state. The 2019 constitution codifies that Cuba remains a one-party system in which the Communist Party is the only legal political party. The constitution enshrines one-party rule by the Partido Comunista de Cuba) [PCC]. Political expression outside the Communist Party is not permitted. Elections are neither free nor fair. Citizens are not permitted to form political parties or run as candidates from political parties other than the PCC. Candidates for office must be nominated by a PCC “mass organization” and approved by local party officials. These PCC-approved candidates win the vast majority of votes, since electors are limited to PCC representatives. PCC membership may be a requirement for high-ranking political positions and an advantage for high-ranking management positions in state-owned companies. Nonmembership in the PCC could serve as a comparative disadvantage for individuals seeking such positions.
In national elections held in October 2019, Miguel Díaz-Canel was declared the winner of the role for president. He assumed the presidency, an office re-established following a constitutional referendum held in February 2019, after replacing Raul Castro as first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, which was until then the highest political entity of the state by law. Elections were neither free nor fair nor competitive.
The Ministry of Interior controls police, internal security forces, and the prison system. The ministry’s National Revolutionary Police is the primary law enforcement organization. Specialized units of the ministry’s state security branch are responsible for monitoring, infiltrating, and suppressing independent political activity. The national leadership, including members of the military, maintained effective control over the security forces. There were reports that members of the security forces committed numerous abuses.
There were numerous reports of police and other official corruption in enforcement of economic restrictions and provision of government services. For example, employees frequently stole products from government stocks and sold them on the black market. Corruption by customs officers was also reportedly common. The government and state-controlled businesses engaged in international money laundering to evade sanctions.
The Ministry of Interior employed a system of informants and neighborhood groups, known as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, to monitor government opponents and report on their activities. Agents from the ministry’s General Directorate for State Security frequently subjected foreign journalists, visiting foreign officials, diplomats, academics, and businesspersons to surveillance, including electronic surveillance. Prosecutors routinely introduced irrelevant or unreliable evidence to prove intent or offered testimony regarding the defendant’s “revolutionary credentials,” which refers to a defendant’s perceived loyalty to the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) or lack thereof. The government used a defamation of character law to arrest or detain individuals critical of the country’s leadership. Authorities frequently arrested and charged persons with the vague crime of “contempt of authority.”
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings, by the government; torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of political dissidents, detainees, and prisoners by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrests and detentions; political prisoners; transnational repression against individuals in another country; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including violence or threats of violence against journalists, censorship, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and enforcement or threat to enforce criminal libel laws to limit expression; serious restrictions on internet freedom; substantial interference with the right of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws on the organization, funding, or operation of nongovernmental and civil society organizations; severe restrictions on religious freedom; restrictions on freedom of movement and residence within the country and on the right to leave the country; inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation; serious government corruption; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence, including femicide; trafficking in persons, including forced labor; and outlawing of independent trade unions.
The government continued its pattern of arbitrary arrests of activists, dissidents, and their relatives. Police routinely stopped and questioned citizens, requested identification, and carried out search-and-seizure operations directed at known activists. Police used legal provisions against public disorder, contempt of authority, lack of respect, aggression, and failure to pay minimal or arbitrary fines as ways to detain, threaten, and arrest civil society activists. Police routinely conducted short-term detentions to interfere with individuals’ rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression, and at times assaulted detainees. Such detentions generally lasted from several hours to several days. After being taken into custody, suspects were typically fined and released. A study by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights noted that relatives of political prisoners were often fired from their jobs or had their private business licenses canceled.
Police typically used various pretexts to harass and arrest persons exercising freedom of expression. For example, on 24 June 2022, a court sentenced artist and activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who had protested restrictive laws such as Decree 349, to five years in prison on charges of “outrage against national symbols,” disrespect, and public disorder. The charges primarily dated to a 2019 art series in which Otero Alcántara took photographs of himself wearing only the Cuban flag. The official sentence stated that Otero Alcántara had offended the flag in “denigrating acts accompanied by notoriously offensive and disrespectful expressions.”
Cuban Prisoners Defenders estimated there were at least 1,026 political prisoners in detention as of September 2022. The lack of governmental transparency, along with systemic abuse of due process rights, obscured the true nature of criminal charges, investigations, and prosecutions. This allowed government authorities to prosecute and sentence peaceful human rights activists for alleged criminal violations.
Political prisoners were held jointly with the general prison population. Political prisoners who refused to wear standard prison uniforms were denied certain privileges, such as family visits, access to prison libraries, reductions in the length of their sentence, or transfer from a maximum-security to a medium-security prison. Prison cells were overcrowded. Many prison and detention cells reportedly lacked adequate water, sanitation, light, ventilation, and temperature control. Although the government provided some food and medical care, many prisoners were compelled to rely on their families for food and other basic supplies. Potable water was often unavailable.
On 28 March 2022, the Spain-based NGO Cuban Prisoners Defenders presented a report to the UN Committee Against Torture documenting 101 cases of torture of prisoners in the country. The report identified 15 patterns of mistreatment and torture: deprivation of medical care among political prisoners; forced labor and forced labor not related to the prisoners’ status as a defendant or criminal conviction; highly uncomfortable, damaging, degrading, and prolonged forced postures; solitary confinement; use of temperature as a torture mechanism; physical aggressions; driving inmates to unknown locations; intentional disorientation; deprivation of liquids and food; sleep deprivation; deprivation of communication with family, defense counsel, and relatives; threats to prisoners’ integrity and safety, and threats to their loved ones; threatening exhibitions of weapons or elements of torture; intentional subjection to anguish, grief, or uncertainty about the situation of a family member; and humiliation, degradation, and verbal abuse.
The government selectively blocked the communications of government critics to prevent them from communicating with one another, sharing content, or reporting on government harassment. Human rights activists reported frequent government monitoring and disruption of cell phone and landline services prior to planned events or key anniversaries related to human rights. Security forces conducted arbitrary stops and searches, especially in urban areas and at government-controlled checkpoints at the entrances to provinces and municipalities. Authorities used dubious pretenses to enter residences where they knew activists were meeting, such as “random” inspections of utilities, for epidemiological reasons, or spurious reports of disturbance.
The government or the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) directly owned all print and broadcast media outlets and almost all widely available sources of information. News and information programming were generally uniform across all government-controlled outlets. The government controlled all printing presses and nearly all publications. The government limited the importation of printed materials.
Despite meeting government vetting requirements, journalists belonging to state media institutions who reported on sensitive subjects did so at personal risk, and the government barred them from working for unofficial media outlets in addition to their official duties. The government harassed and threatened independent citizen journalists who reported on human rights abuses.
The government restricted academic freedom and controlled the curricula at all schools and universities, emphasizing the importance of reinforcing PCC rule through “revolutionary ideology” and “discipline.” Most academics refrained from meeting with foreigners, including diplomats, journalists, and visiting scholars, without prior government approval. Government monitors were sometimes present at these meetings. University admissions criteria gave great weight to prospective students’ ideological beliefs, and public libraries required citizens to complete a registration process before authorities granted access to books or information.
Although the constitution provides for a limited right of assembly, the right is subject to the requirement that it may not be “exercised against the existence and objectives of the socialist state.” The law requires citizens to request authorization for organized meetings of three or more persons, and failure to do so carries a penalty of up to six months in prison and a fine. The government tolerated some gatherings, and many religious groups reported the ability to gather without registering or facing sanctions.
On numerous occasions, the government, using undercover police and Ministry of Interior agents, allegedly organized “acts of repudiation” by crowds of civilians organized to assault and disperse persons who assembled peacefully. These agents arrived in government-owned buses or were recruited by government officials from nearby workplaces or schools. Participants arrived and departed in shifts, chanted progovernment slogans, sang progovernment songs, and verbally taunted those who had peacefully assembled. The persons targeted by this harassment at times suffered physical assault or property damage.
The law restricts the right of citizens to leave the country. The law provides for imprisonment, a moderate fine, or both for those who attempt to depart the country illegally. According to reports, in the case of military or police personnel, or those traveling with children, the punishment could be more severe. The government prohibited human rights activists, religious leaders, independent journalists, and artists from traveling outside the country to attend events related to human rights and democracy. The government arbitrarily designated some persons as regulados, allowing authorities to prohibit them from receiving a passport, leaving the country, or returning.
The government sought to pressure activists into exile to avoid extreme prison sentences or threats to their family. Human Rights Watch said that for Cubans who opposed the political system, there were two options: prison or exile.
The 2019 constitution includes many sections that restrict citizens’ ability to participate fully in political processes by deeming the PCC the state’s only legal political party and the “superior driving force of the society and the state.” The constitution codifies the use of citizen violence to suppress dissent: “Citizens have the right to combat through any means, including armed combat when other means are not available, anyone who intends to overthrow the political, social, and economic order established by this constitution.”
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged 23 March 2023 that the candidates for Parliament are "an impressive, integral and diverse portrait of the people of Cuba." The president said "What we appreciate in the brief life sketches of all the candidates for deputies is an impressive integral and diverse portrait of the people of Cuba,"
The candidacy for the National Assembly of People's Power (ANPP) was mostly made up of citizens who are not known beyond their locality, in addition to artists, athletes, renowned scientists, as well as the President of the Republic. Of the 470 legislators who would make up the ANPP, 221 would be constituency delegates (basic cell of the government system), 135 of provincial origin and 114 nationals (24.2 percent).
National Electoral Council (CEN) President Alina Balseiro announced the preliminary results of the elections for the renewal of the Cuban parliament. She confirmed that 6,164,876 out of 8,120,072 citizens went to the polls to exercise their political rights. That figure represents 75.92 percent of the electoral roll. Counted with respect to the total votes cast, 90.3 percent of the votes were valid, 6.2 percent votes were cast blank, and 3.5 percent of the votes were invalid. The CNE President also detailed that 72.1 percent of the citizens voted for all the candidates for the National Assembly and 27.9 percent of the citizens chose the candidates selectively.
The authorities confirmed that the Cubans validated 470 citizens who will become members of the National Assembly given that they exceeded the threshold of 50 percent of votes required to be elected as representatives. The CEN president also remarked that the electoral process occurred without notable incidents and adhering to the procedures and laws.
The opposition scoffed at the turnout figures, with dissident Manuel Cuesta Morua of the Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba warning about "the government's electoral mathematics." "At 9am it reports that 18.2 percent of the electorate has voted. At 11am it says 41.66 percent -- that is, in less than two hours the turnout increased by 23.46" points, he said on Twitter. "Impossible!!! The polling stations are empty."
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