Cuban Communist Party not to stand in the April elections
Campaign News | Saturday, 12 February 2005
Cubans are free to select and reject candidates of their choice
Havana, Feb 11 - The Cuban Communist Party (PCC) will not propose candidates to campaign in Cuban elections, according to the Cuban daily newspaper Granma.
The PCC, the mainstay of Cuban political and steadfastness and unity, and the only political party allowed under the Cuban constitution, is not an organization with electoral purposes, the daily published in reference to April?s government elections.
Granma made clear that the PCC will not go after seats at the People?s Power National Assembly (unicameral Parliament), Provincial Assemblies and Municipal Assemblies.
The Party?s mission in elections is to ensure the people?s rights are upheld with full clarity and respect for the ethics and principles of the Cuban Revolution, underlined the daily.
The PCC, it added, did not propose, elect or revoke the candidates to State posts.
The election of People?s Power leaders and their revocation if they neglect their functions are powers that the ordinary Cuban people have exerted since the first elections following the Revolution triumph were held.
After the 1976 polls, the Cuban population has nominated and elected many PCC militants, but this is due to their their merits, skills and talents and nothing to do with coercion or obligation. Alomost half of the representatives in the national parliament whihc makes Cuba's laws are not members of the Party.
It is the Cuban people who prepare elections, from the designation of authorities and the elaboration of electoral registers to the public vote count and check, and the publication of elected people, said the paper.
On the argument that local elections lack transparency because only one party participates, the newspaper emphatically contended: "The multiparty system (before 1959) prevented sectors and people with socio-economic, political and cultural platforms from assuming power and eliminating the underdeveloped and dependent nature of the Island."
Cubans have absolutely proven to be a nation of free men and women who are able to propose and revoke their leaders, Granma maintains.
On April 17, as every two years, nearly eight million Cubans will select the People?s Power National Assembly members (169 across the country).
If candidates do not obtain 50 percent of votes, as stipulated by the law, a second round will be held between the two favorite candidates.
Since the People?s Power was established in Cuban in 1976, over 95 percent Cubans have participated in elections.
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BCC188962-D48C-4ADE-BD93-6740D8C5A34C%7D&language=EN
