Cuban Democracy, the Threat Washington Dreads Most
By Ndzana Seme, 07/05/2004
After Pearl Harbor, the different actual threats the United States have recorded are terrorist attacks. The authors of these attacks were either Americans, or Middle-Easterners and the like. Yet, before the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and even today, if you ask the average American who is the threat for America, the response will always be Fidel Castro. If you ask for the name of a dictator, the automatic answer will also be Fidel Castro.
The media and military coup attempt against the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002 and the recent successful coup followed by abduction of Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide were organized or supported by the White House, because those presidents are all viewed as Castros, even without beard.
At this very period when the world knows well that, from the Cold War to the Saddam regime, from Castro’s Cuban to Mao’s Chinese “communist dictatorships”, the C.I.A. has always fabricated threats against the United States, which politicians use as a means to rally the hard national support they need. This use of cheatings, lies and crimes to obtain the needed General Will – a central condition for a Democracy - and Patriotism is by itself an evidence of the American system’s weakness.
Even when time has clearly shown that Cuba is not at all a threat for the United States, it is interesting to know how Washington is so stubborn to always support that Cuba is one.
The recent event that inspired this article is the draconian travel restrictions to and from Cuba imposed by the Bush administration, which could have forced 80 American medical students studying in Cuba to abandon their studies in the middle of their exam finals.
The most astonishing is that, since 2001 American students have studied at the Latin American Medical School of Havana, where tuition is free. Students pledge to return to their American communities in order to offer low-cost health care to many of those who cannot afford it in the United States.
Despite the condition of poverty that Washington has imposed in the Cuban society since more than 30 years, especially through economic sanctions, we now learn that graduate school tuition is free in the poor Cuba, while it is not free in the wealthy United States.
"These unfair and onerous restrictions by the Bush Administration are clearly a reflection of election-year politics and should be repealed," said congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-California); which in part confirms the fact that you need to play the patriotic string in order to win in American politics, notably the “us and them” string.
Despite the rank of 55th given Cuba on the UNDP’s human development index list, versus 6th for the United States, some areas of the HDI, in which the U.S. praises itself to be world leader as a “Land of the Free” and “First Democracy”, show disturbing figures.
In 2000, women’s political participation rate in terms of seats in lower house was 27.6% in Cuba vs. 14% in the U.S. Female economic activity rate was 117% in Cuba vs. 81% in the U.S. Public expenditures for education as a percentage of GDP was 6.7% in Cuba vs. 5.4% in the U.S. And finally, human poverty index was 4.1% in Cuba vs. 15.8% in the U.S.
Many other aspects of human development show that Cuba is more advanced than the United States, contrary to decades long beliefs that Cuba is the hell, strongly rooted in American society. One of those aspects is Democracy.
Cuba is more democratic than the United States
Two recent serious studies of the Cuban political system that cut through common stereotypes have shown that Cuba can be viewed as an example of achieved democracy. One by a Canadian (Arnold August, in “Democracy in Cuba and the 1997-98 Elections”, Habana: Editorial Jose Marti, 1999), the other by a U.S. national (Peter Roman, in “People's Power: Cuba's Experience with Representative Government”, Boulder: Westview Press, 1999), both are based on extensive field work in Cuba while also drawing on the research of Cuban social scientists.
On these books, Pr. Cliff DuRand of Morgan State University, whose presentation is partially reproduced in this paper, made the following comments: “What emerges from their detailed descriptions and analyses is a portrait of a political system far more democratic than most North Americans believe currently exists in Cuba, even in many ways more democratic than the U.S. --although neither author argues for such a comparison.”
Roman's ultimate aim, he tells us in his Introduction, is to evaluate "whether a local parliamentary system can be considered legitimate, representative, and effective in the absence of oppositional politics, electoral campaigns, and a multiparty system." (6)
The answer can be found in a 1990 Bohemia survey that asked, "Do you feel that you participate in the government of the country?" 60.7% of the respondents said YES, 26% said somewhat, and 13% answered NO (pp. 160-161). This suggests a high level of legitimacy in the eyes of the Cuban people.
So too do the high voter participation rates. Typically over 80% of the Cuban electorate attend the nomination meetings, versus 49% these last years in the U.S. Although voting is not mandatory, in 1986, 97.7% of the eligible Cuban voters voted. In 1989, 98.3% voted. All this without any known electoral riggings.
Voting in Cuba is by secret ballot in enclosed voting booths. During the last decade, with all the economic hardships of the Special Period, right wing Cuban Americans in Miami launched massive propaganda campaigns encouraging Cubans to express their opposition to the government by either not voting or by casting blank or spoiled ballots.
In spite of that, in 1995, 97.1% voted with 11.3% of the ballots not valid. Again in 1997, 97.6% voted, with only 7.2% invalid ballots (pp. 122-125). While these results do show some opposition, even under the most unfavorable interpretation they demonstrate well over 80% support for the government. Can the U.S. government ever do as well?
The U.S. system is so democratic that its current president, George W Bush, was enthroned in 2000 with favorable votes of only 24.13% of American citizens (see TAI February 21, 2003 edition). An abstention rate of 51% of citizens is not of concern for Americans and does not invite them to question their model of democracy.
The Cuban system is in line with Lincoln’s definition of democracy
The model of democracy the U.S. and the West insist is the only valid one is based on multi-party elections. This is a procedural concept of democracy, but it does not necessarily lead to the kind of substantive democracy Abraham Lincoln advocated when he spoke of government, not only of the people (deriving its authority from the sovereign people), but also by the people (involving their active participation) and for the people (serving the people’s interest).
The main thrust of August's argument takes on the United States’ limited electoral definition of democracy and shows that the Cuban political process is procedurally democratic, though it follows significantly different procedures from the U.S. At the same time, it also achieves a degree of substantive democracy that is remarkable.
It is important to mention that Cuba did try the U.S. model. Over the first half of the twentieth century, under U.S. tutelage, Cuba had extensive experience with a multi-party electoral system. It was the total inadequacy of this system to achieve national dignity for Cuba that lead to the 1959 Revolution and the more participatory political system that has evolved since.
August's book exposes what this U.S. model has really amounted to in Cuba. Since the U.S. military occupation that began in 1899, when the U.S. snatched from the Cubans the independence that was within their grasp, U.S. policy has been to divide Cubans politically and promote "respectable representatives" of U.S. interests who could form a stable government. What had to be avoided above all was, in the words of the U.S. military governor of Santiago de Cuba, Leonard Wood, political power falling into the hands of the "ignorant masses", the "unruly rabble" who advocated independence and self government. (102) General Wood candidly stated the U.S. aim as follows:
“The people ask me what we mean by stable government in Cuba. I tell them that when money can be borrowed at a reasonable rate of interest and when capital is willing to invest in the island, a condition of stability will have been reached.” (104) August shows how such neo-colonial objectives have been a continuous thread running through U.S. policy right up to the Helms-Burton Act of today.
This contradiction between the national aspirations of the Cuban people and colonialism and then neo-colonialism throughout the last century and a half that has shaped the Cuban character, that unique and strong sense of national identity called cubania, which is the convergence of nationality with the political struggle of the nation to construct a state through which the people could have power. The content of cubania is the quest for independence, democracy and social justice.
Participation, the root of Cuba’s democratic system
Cubania’s current outcome is the participatory political institutions that August and Roman so ably describe. From the elected assemblies on the municipal, provincial and national levels, through the accountability sessions with local constituents, to the Workers' Parliaments and other mass consultations on major policy issues, there are extensive channels for popular participation in Cuba.
The foundation of Cuban democracy is in the locally elected delegados to the Municipal Assemblies. While there must be more candidates than positions in these elections, there is no campaigning allowed and there are not several political parties competing.
Roman quotes a Cuban voter who expresses disgust with political campaigns. "For us the delegate must be a humble person, not given to self promotion." (118) Delegados are elected by constituents who know them personally based on their character, local reputation, and ability to represent them. They function as ombudsmen, advocates for the people to make state institutions in their areas accountable and are required to meet with their constituents semi-annually to give an account of their work and receive new complaints/problems/ suggestions.
While this is not a legislative body, it does serve to bridge political and civil society, a channel that does not exist in the U.S.
Legislative powers rest with the elected National Assembly, up to half of whose 601 members are also local delegates, who in practice are the most active deputies. Other members are drawn from various walks of life.
Key to the selection of the National Assembly is the National Candidacy Commission. It is made up of representatives from the trade unions, the women's federation, student groups, small farmers and the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.
The Communist Party is not represented, and since 1992 has been banned from participating in either the nomination or election process. Nominations are made by citizens in plenums of these mass organizations.
Tens of thousands of nominations are made for the 601 seats in the National Assembly. It is the task of the Candidacy Commission to whittle this down through extensive consultations to 601 nominees who are a mirror of the nation.
The function of the Cuban Communist Party in this process, according to Cuban researchers cited by Roman, is "mobilization of resources, coordination, and guaranteeing the correct application of established norms and respect for the wishes of the voters." (p. 110) The party is not an electoral party. It no longer participates in the nomination of candidates, nor do they have to be party members. The Communist Party's principal role is to lead society. It no longer defines itself as the vanguard of the working class alone, but the vanguard of the Cuban people as a whole.
One party to maintain unity that makes democracy possible
It is out of the desire to maintain that unity that there is only one party. Cuba's bitter experience with a multi party system that divided society and made it vulnerable to manipulation by the U.S. taught the people the value of a single party of national unity.
While August has the more extensive discussion of the nomination process, Roman gives more extensive treatment to the accountability sessions and the popular councils. Indeed, he sees these as the most democratic feature of Cuba's political system. He sees them as the Cuban adaptation of the “mandat impératif” system, i.e. instructed delegates acting as agents of their constituents, a model that Roman traces to Rousseau's direct democracy.
It is clear that the democratic character of the Cuban political system cannot be fully understood by simply looking at the formal electoral process. One must also look at the numerous means of popular participation, consultation and accountability that at one and the same time makes government responsive and educates the people. Responding to a typical statement by President Clinton that Cuba lacks democracy and accountability, Roman quotes a Cuban author as replying:
“He says this about the only government in the hemisphere, including the United States, that not only is subject to direct accountability sessions by the people, but also ... subjects to popular debate entire policies such as the island's finances [referring to the worker's parliaments]. Where can the average North American formally register opinions on the financial or tax policies of Washington, to ratify or oppose the decisions of the cabinet, the legislature and a select group of corporate plutocrats? To which voters and to what people is the government accountable when it decides to undertake the arms race or star wars?” (pp. 155-156)
Castro explained the rationale well:
"We take months--it doesn't matter that months go by--in assemblies of one type or another, gathering opinions of the workers, explaining again, persuading, illustrating things that are not well understood, in order to achieve a consensus on what we must do, and in this way we continue to succeed." (p. 256).
It is by such means that the General Will is realized and democracy is achieved. It is also by such means that it is easy to create a society that perfectly integrates ethnics and races, contrary to the U.S. where racial inequalities are not eradicable. It is also by such means that Cuba became the only country in the planet with a leader without any sizeable personal wealth, even after having ruled his nation for more than 40 years.
As Rousseau recognized, this is possible only if there is a basic equality among the people. "Achieving consensus is attributed to a lack of corporate interests and struggles among competing powerful interest groups." This makes possible "the confluence of many opinions to arrive at a unity of action", a genuine consensus, not just a false unanimity (p. 86).
It looks as if implementing a real democracy can blow up the U.S. system. That real democracy is the threat Cuba represents in the southern American area that the U.S. has many reasons to keep under control.
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