All 470 candidates win unopposed elections in Cuba

After the parliamentary elections in Cuba, all candidates go to the National Assembly.

470 candidates, who were pre-approved by state commissions, ran for the 470 seats on Sunday – according to the preliminary results, they all received the necessary majority of votes, as the head of the electoral authority CEN, Alina Balseiro, announced on Monday.

According to her, participation was nearly 76 percent of the eight million eligible voters. Dissidents had called for people not to go to the polls to protest against the pseudo-democratic exercise.

According to Balseiro, more than 72 percent of the valid votes were cast at once by ticking a large circle in the middle of the ballot paper for all candidates in the relevant constituency. The government had promoted this option. Only the Communist Party is allowed in Cuba – the state portrays the system as a true democracy because it promotes unity.

The National Assembly, Cuba’s only parliamentary chamber, will elect the president from among its ranks on April 19. In all likelihood, Miguel Díaz-Canel will be re-elected. In 2018, he was promoted to head of state, becoming the first ruler whose name is not Castro since the revolution’s victory in 1959. His predecessor, Raúl Castro, now 91, had abdicated power. But he remained in parliament and now rose again.

Elián González, 29, is the new member of the assembly. His fate once troubled many people around the world after he was rescued from the sea off the coast of Florida at the age of five in late 1999. His mother drowned trying to flee to the United States, and after months of fighting between the two countries, he returned to his father in Cuba.

The Caribbean state is facing serious economic problems and is probably experiencing the biggest flight since the revolution. The official turnout in the socialist republic has long been well above 90 percent, but has been falling since 2013. (aeg/sda/dpa)