I figured I would start this thread now and update it later, because we may be in for some big news from Cuba in about a week.
I won’t bore you with the details of Cuba’s election system, but if you’re interested go to this wiki link to read about it. Suffice it to say that there is only one candidate for every elected position in a ballot.
But here’s the potentially interesting part, Cuba’s government newspaper, Granma, reports that the list of candidates has been finalized and it is ready to be presented to the People’s Assembly for publication on December 2nd. This is interesting because unless Fidel Castro’s name is included in that list of candidates Fidel will be, at least officially, out of power, and Raul will be the man.
There are some internal struggles for power in Cuba right now, with Fidel loyalists fighting for power with Raul’s loyalists, and so far Raul seems to be winning that battle. In the past year he has replaced 4 or 6 ministers with his own people. But two prominent Fidel loyalists are still in power, Perez Roque and Carlos Lage.
In the past both Fidel and Raul have been on a ballot for some municipality somewhere in Havana, since they both live in an area reserved for high government officials. Their names however have not appeared in any national ballot.
Cuba doesn’t have any national ballots, do they? Aren’t the President of the Council of State and the President of the Council of Ministers (Fidel Castro) elected by the National Assembly?
BTW Do Cuban electoral officials even bother to actually count the ballots?
That’s correct, all elections are local, and from those local representatives the offices of President and so on are selected by the assembly. Of course if Fidel does not appear in a local ballot, by law, he can not be elected to a leadership position, which is why December 2nd is bound to be a pretty interesting day.
The ballots are supposedly counted, and Granma publishes totals. Since the only options are to vote for a candidate or leave the ballot blank, most totals just list valid ballots, with blank ballots called “spoiled”, the ratio is usually in the high 90%'s for valid ballots.
Not reported officially yet, but friends in Havana tell me that Fidel’s name is on the ballot, so it looks like at least for now he will remain part of the government.