Cuba confirmed this Monday (27) that the elections held yesterday had the lowest popular participation among all parliamentary elections held in the country since the 1959 revolution.
At a press conference, Alina Balseiro, president of the National Electoral Council (CEN), reported, based on preliminary data, that 75.92% of the more than 8.1 million Cubans summoned to go to the polls voted on Sunday.
This participation rate is almost ten percentage points lower than that of the 2018 parliamentary elections, a process that renewed the Parliament that elected the current dictator, Miguel Díaz-Canel, who at the time succeeded Raúl Castro (2008-2018).
While this is a very high percentage for any other country in the Western Hemisphere, the number is considerably lower than the historical average in Cuba before 2018, always above 90%.
However, participation was higher than in the two elections held last year — the referendum on the Family Code, in September, and the municipal election, in November.
Balseiro added that 90.28% of the votes counted yesterday were valid, 6.22% were blank and 3.50% were annulled.
She also pointed out that all the candidates who will occupy the 470 seats in the Parliament – the vast majority of militants from the Communist Party or related organizations – have overcome the 50% barrier clause of the votes and, therefore, were elected.
The president of SEN noted that the process was carried out “without incident and legally”, a scenario very different from what was denounced by NGOs and dissidents inside and outside the island.
After Sunday’s elections, three independent election observation NGOs – there were no international observers in Cuba – described the elections as the “most irregular” in the country since 1976 and considered that the “will” of the people was not respected.
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