Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular

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Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular
National Assembly of People's Power
logo Palacio de las Convenciones
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Basic data
Seat: Havana
Legislative period : 5 years
MPs: 605
Current legislative period
Last choice: March 11, 2018
Chair: Esteban Lazo (since 2013)
Cuba National Assembly of People's Power 2018.svg
IX. Legislative period 2018–2023
Distribution of seats:
  • PCC
    605 seats
    		•
    Website
    www.parlamentocubano.cu

    The Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular ( Spanish for National Assembly of People's Power ) is the name of the parliament of Cuba according to the Cuban constitution of February 15, 1976. The parliament is not freely elected , but determined in sham elections according to unified lists , opposition representatives are not in Representing parliament and the influence of parliament on political decisions is de facto small. Power rests with the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) .

    The 605 honorary MPs (2013: 614) are formally determined in one-person constituencies . Only one candidate is admitted at a time; there is no election campaign. The electoral term lasts 5 years, the last elections took place on March 11, 2018, the penultimate on February 3, 2013. Parliament meets in two sessions a year. In the meantime, the 31-member Council of Ministers acts as legislator. There is no separation of powers . The current President of Parliament is Esteban Lazo (since 2013).

    history

    Before the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Cuba had a two-chamber parliament consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives . The last elections to this parliament were the elections of November 1, 1956, in which half of the MPs in both houses were re-elected.

    There was no parliament for the next 20 years. In his manifesto of July 1957, Fidel Castro had announced that after the victory of the revolution, he would reinstate the Cuban constitution of 1940 and hold free elections as soon as the revolution was successful. In April 1959, after he had come to power, he spoke of postponing the elections and in a speech on May 1, 1960 he declared the idea of liberal democracy and elections to be “ decadent ” and renounced the legitimation of his regime Elections. The introduction of council democracy was also rejected with reference to the associated bureaucracy. Since 1965, Cuba has been a one-party system and the communist party is the only permitted political force.

    Fidel Castro's regime justified the renunciation of democratic (and even sham democratic) institutions with the fact that the political decision-making process in Cuba is determined by the grassroots democratic activity of the population in the mass organizations (trade unions, committees for the defense of the revolution, Cuban women's association, student organizations, etc.) would.

    Since Fidel Castro handed over governance to his brother Raúl and the economic and political reform course he initiated in 2008, there have been initial discussions within official forums and media on the gradual democratization of Cuban parliamentarism, including Cuban political scientists belonging to the Communist Party made important contributions. In political practice, the Cuban state introduced the first elements of the separation of powers at the municipal and provincial level on a trial basis from 2011, initially limited to the provinces of Mayabeque and Artemisa and intended to separate the respective Asambleas del Poder Popular from the executive organs. The personal union of the chairmen of the municipal assemblies with the chairmen of the municipal administrations, as laid down in Article 117 of the constitution, was deliberately disregarded with the aim of reforming the constitutional article in the foreseeable future using the knowledge gained in practice. The pilot project, originally limited to 18 months, was extended to the end of 2016 in summer 2014 by decision of the National Assembly.

    Poder Popular at the national level

    Proportion of women in the Cuban parliament compared to other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (2011)

    The National Assembly of People's Power (National Assembly of People's Power) as the Cuban Parliament in accordance with Article 70 of the Cuban Constitution formally constituent and legislative power. In practice, it serves to approve the requirements of Castro and the Communist Party.

    The National Assembly only meets twice a year for ordinary sessions. Extraordinary sessions of the National Assembly must be called at the request of one third of the delegates. In practice, however, this does not happen. Extraordinary meetings can also be called by the Council of State. The MPs are volunteers. Since the vast majority of them are employed outside of client work, the possibilities for in-depth engagement with the topics under discussion are significantly limited. In addition to the plenary sessions, this also applies to the work in the permanent and temporary parliamentary committees, both at national, provincial and local level.

    The National Assembly of People's Power determines the Council of State after the Central Committee of the Communist Party has voted on the election proposals of the National Electoral Commission, which is formally independent of it. The chairman of the state council is head of state and government. The Council of State is formally accountable to Parliament. The Asamblea Nacional advises and decides on all laws, political guidelines and the state budget. The proportion of women in the Cuban parliament is 43% in 2011, the highest of all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition, the proportion of women has continuously increased over the years. In 2000 it was 28%, in 2003 it was 36% and since 2008 it has been 43%.

    In December 2013, MP Mariela Castro , daughter of the Cuban State Council President Raúl Castro , became the first member of the Poder Popular to vote against a government bill. Until then, votes have always been unanimous. Observers disagree about the meaning of this dissenting voice: while Arturo Lopez-Levy from the University of Denver speaks of a possible door opener, Ted Henken , Professor of Latin American Studies at Baruch College in New York, believes that only Mariela Castro, but no simple MP could afford.

    Poder Popular at the provincial and municipal levels

    The Asamblea Provincial del Poder Popular (Provincial Assembly of People's Power, APPP) is in all 15 provinces as well as on Isla de la Juventud . Their delegates are appointed for five years. On paper, their main function is to draw up development plans for each province and to control the provincial administrations. Like the national and local parliaments, the provincial assemblies are dominated by the Communist Party.

    The Asambleas Municipales del Poder Popular (Municipal Assemblies of People's Power, AMPP) are elected in the 169 municipalities (Municipios). Elections take place every two and a half years.

    Just like the national parliament, the members of the provincial and local parliaments have hardly any political influence in the centralized structure of “ democratic centralism ”.

    elections

    Candidates for the elections for the national and provincial parliaments in Santiago de Cuba (2008)

    In 1974 the Cuban government decided to hold (sham) elections initially only for the province of Matanzas . In 1975 the first provincial parliament was determined in the province of Matanzas. The experiences made there led to the first elections for people's power assemblies at municipal and provincial level on October 10 and October 17, 1976.

    On December 2, 1976, the first elections to the National Assembly of People's Power took place, which in turn confirmed the State Council. The State Council is also the body that determines the National Electoral Commission - the institution that is responsible for conducting elections and forming the respective electoral commissions at regional and local level.

    All Cuban citizens over the age of 16 have the right to vote and stand for election, with the exception of prison inmates and people who have been recognized by court decision as not sane. For the National Assembly alone, the right to stand for election begins at the age of 18. As usual in the people 's democracies , the regime reported high voter turnouts (up to 99.6 percent) and approval rates . In the last local elections in April 2015, voter turnout reached an all-time low of 88.3 percent, while the proportion of blank or invalid ballot papers totaled 9.46 percent.

    Members of the national as well as provincial parliament are the respective election commissions majority of the regimented mass and student organizations ( Committee for the Defense of the Revolution , Women's Association , Central Union , student organization proposed, etc.), the local base of the organization does not regularly involved in the nomination process is. Less than half of the MPs are made up of delegados elected directly at the base of the constituencies . According to the electoral law, MPs can belong to parliaments at several levels at the same time.

    There is only one candidate for “election” for each of the mandates of the ANPP and the APPP. The mass organizations controlled by the Communist Party, as well as the media that have been brought into line, are campaigning massively for the confirmation of the unified list by the voters, who only have the option of casting empty or invalid ballots as an alternative. The candidates at all parliamentary levels do not campaign or present their own political programs. They are only presented to the voters through posted short biographies drawn up by the election commissions.

    The elections to the local parliaments have a peculiarity compared to the elections at the provincial and national level: the candidates are all nominated in local neighborhood assemblies on the proposal of the electorate of the respective constituency, while at the higher levels a majority of the candidates are nominated by the Communist Party subordinate mass organizations is determined. Thus the elections to the local parliaments have an important democratic element that the other elections lack, but which is limited by the influence of the state election commissions and the use of the political police. The chairpersons and vice-chairpersons of the Asambleas Municipales del Poder Popular (AMPP) are determined by the elected MPs, but without the selection criteria of the proposal committees or the voting proportions being published. By virtue of their office, these top people's representatives are also chairmen of their respective municipal administrations ( Consejos de Administración Municipal ) and thus the highest state representatives at the municipal level, which represents a clear conflict of interests.

    In April 2015, the fact that among the more than 27,000 candidates for 12,589 honorary mandates to be awarded in 168 municipalities, two Cubans who were openly opposed and who voted in previous electoral meetings from their neighbors, provided international coverage were nominated as candidates. Only representatives supporting the government were elected and sent to the AMPP. The last time in Havana was in the 1990s that opposition members were nominated by voters in their respective constituencies. As later in 2015, the responsible election commissions then prepared short biographies for public notice, which attributed negative characteristics to the candidates, whereupon they did not receive a majority of votes. In another case, during her third mandate, an originally loyal to the government parishioner gained supraregional notoriety for her persistent fight against the closure of the only school in her constituency, whereupon the authorities redesigned her constituency in 2012 to prevent her re-election.

    Presidents of Parliament

    Parliament seat

    The Asamblea Nacional does not have its own building for its rare meetings, but instead meets in the multifunctional Palacio de Convenciones (PALCO) in an exclusive part of the western district of Playa . After the renovation work that is currently under way has been completed, Parliament will be back in the Capitolio , one of the largest and most prominent buildings in the city center. The parliament of the old republic, which was dissolved in 1959, met there until the victory of the revolution.

    Web links

    Individual evidence

    1. ^ Felix Braunsdorf: How likely is Cuba's democratic transformation? GRIN, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-640-68755-8 , page 5, online .
    2. ↑ Raimund Krämer, Dirk Krüger: The Cuban Political System. In: Klaus Stüwe, Stefan Rinke: The political systems in North and Latin America. An introduction. Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-531-14252-4 , page 371, online .
    3. ↑ E.g. Carlos Alzugaray Treto: Cuba cincuenta años después: continuidad y cambio político. ( Memento of October 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF). In: Temas No. 60, October – December 2009. - Daniel Rafuls Pineda: El sistema electoral cubano: de la representación formal a la participación real. ( Memento of April 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF). In: Temas No. 78, April-June 2014, accessed on August 13, 2019 (Spanish).
    4. ↑ Aprueban separación de poderes en Artemisa y Mayabeque. In: Cubaencuentro of August 2, 2011, accessed April 21, 2015 (Spanish).
    5. ↑ Extienden la experiencia en Artemisa y Mayabeque hasta el 2016. In: Granma of July 6, 2014, accessed on April 22, 2015 (Spanish).
    6. ↑ Rafuls Pineda: El sistema electoral cubano. ( Memento of April 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) p. 65 f.
    7. ↑ Rafuls Pineda: El sistema electoral cubano. ( Memento of April 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) pp. 65 and 70 (note 13).
    8. ↑ Andrea Rodriguez: The end of unanimity , AP in taz.de from August 20, 2014.
    9. ↑ In the provincial assembly of the capital Havana, constituted in February 2013, 118 members of the Communist Party (83%) are of 143 members of parliament. See Constituida Asamblea Provincial del Poder Popular en La Habana. ( Memento of the original from January 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tribuna.cu archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Tribuna de La Habana, February 11, 2013, accessed April 21, 2015 (Spanish).
    10. ↑ Raimund Krämer, Dirk Krüger: The Cuban Political System. In: Klaus Stüwe, Stefan Rinke: The political systems in North and Latin America. An introduction. Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-531-14252-4 , page 373, online .
    11. ↑ Sistema electoral cubano in the Cuban state online encyclopedia EcuRed , accessed on April 22, 2015 (Spanish).
    12. ↑ La Comisión Electoral de Cuba cifra en un 88.3% la participación en las elecciones a la Asamblea Municipal. In: Europa Press of April 21, 2015 (Spanish).
    13. ↑ Rafuls Pineda: El sistema electoral cubano. ( Memento of April 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF), p. 66 (Spanish).
    14. ↑ The state-run Cuban media gave the proportion of members of the National Assembly elected in February 2013 from the constituencies of 33.33 (Granma) and 46 percent (Mesa Redonda). See Rafuls Pineda: El sistema electoral cubano. ( Memento of April 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF), p. 70 Note 14 (Spanish).
    15. ^ Calzadilla: Critical Analysis regarding Sunday's Cuban Elections.
    16. ↑ a b Havana: Oppositionists fail in local elections in Cuba. In: Spiegel Online from April 20, 2015.
    17. ↑ Los opositores cubanos creen que su candidatura no ganó. In: DW.de from April 20, 2015 (Spanish).
    18. ↑ a b Rafuls Pineda: El sistema electoral cubano ( Memento of April 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF), p. 65.
    19. ^ Periodista independiente, nominado a 'elecciones' municipales del Poder Popular. In: Diario de Cuba of March 9, 2015, accessed April 21, 2015 (Spanish).
    20. ↑ a b Rosa Muñoz Lima: Elecciones municipales en Cuba: ¿algo nuevo? In: DW.de of April 17, 2015 (Spanish).
    21. ^ Michel Suárez: Castro celebra el bicentenario del 'gerrymandering'. In: Diario de Cuba of September 24, 2012, accessed April 20, 2015 (Spanish).
    22. ^ Sarah Rainsford: Cuba's capitol: Ink wells v internet points , BBC News, September 12, 2013.