¿How does the Cuban Parliament work?
In a parliamentary nation,
the parliament must be
a true copy of the people who elected it,
and if it is not, then it must be made to be.
José Martí
The National Assembly of People's Power of the Republic of Cuba (Parliament) was established in 1976 when the people approved the Constitution in a public referendum by voting 97.7 % in favour. It is the result of a historical process which began with the first Constituent Assembly held in 1869, when Cubans were battling fiercely against the Spanish army to free themselves from colonial servitude; continued down through all other assemblies held on the battlefields at Guáimaro (1869), Baraguá (1878), Jimaguayú (1895), La Yaya (1897), and Havana (1901, after the war with Spain ended); spanned the fraudulent municipal and presidential elections (1900) orchestrated by US General Leonard Wood, military governor of Cuba, and ended in the prolonged period from 1902 to 1958, during which the Cuban people suffered the consequences of a neo-colonial system which not only replicated the worst aspects of the US system, but also subordinated Cuban national interests to those of the great power to the north. This system was based on the multiparty game and on the allegedly independent interaction of three powers: the judicial, the executive and the legislative, although these in fact functioned exclusively in the interests of the dominant oligarchies. This system bequeathed to the Revolution a society of one million illiterates, 500,000 unemployed people, and an infant mortality rate of 60 deaths per 1000 live births for children under one year old, among other social evils.
Those who, in good or bad faith, criticize the actual Cuban political system are willingly or unwillingly unaware of the fact that the Cuban Parliament is supported by five main pillars of a genuine, real democracy, to wit:
Those who criticise us are also unaware of the fact that our system of People's Power consists of the National Assembly, the provincial assemblies, the municipal assemblies, the popular councils, and the constituencies, these latter being the system's basic building block. Although no body is subordinate to any other, their duties and activities complement each other in such a way that the goal of having the people govern practically and effectively is met.
Those who enjoy discussing parliament and democracy must answer the following questions: is democracy the number of days during which a parliament works? Is democracy the number of political parties represented in a parliament? Is democracy the existence of majority and minority tendencies in a parliament? Is democracy the power of one man to veto the laws approved by a parliament? Is democracy a combination of all those factors, it mattering not a jot who benefits from the laws passed nor if the agreements reached surrender the country's sovereignty to foreign nations or transnational companies? The Cuban people prefers to believe that democracy is their right to nominate, elect and recall their representatives in parliament.
The Cuban people prefers to believe that democracy is social justice, equality and equity, the right to live, to work, to education, to culture, to housing, to personal and family safety. It prefers to believe that democracy is also dignity, the right and duty to have and defend a free, independent, sovereign nation that stands in solidarity with other sovereign nations. It is also the right of people to establish the political system they think is best. It prefers to believe that democracy is as Abraham Lincoln said the rule of the people, by the people, and for the people. It prefers to believe in the definition of democracy given by President Fidel Castro: «…that governments be, first of all, intimately linked to the people, emerge from the people, be supported by the people and devote themselves completely to working and fighting for the people and for the people's interests.»
When the specific subject of the way Cuba's parliament works is discussed, the point must be made that the political system of this country differs considerably from that in countries that operate under what is known as representative democracy.
Whereas our political system is the genuine outcome of an autochthonous revolution and its ruling premise is the existence of one single power, the power of the people, the system in effect in countries with representative democracy is organized and based on the classic division between the three powers: legislative, executive and judicial.
It is only logical, therefore that ideas so radically opposed give rise to radically opposed concepts, ways and methods concerning who should be a member of the parliament and how it should operate.
Whereas the parliament is just one of the elements of the capitalist system, which is increasingly under fire, the National Assembly of People's Power (parliament) is the key element in the Cuban political system, since it is the supreme body of state power and represents and expresses the sovereign will of the people, as defined in article 69 of our Constitution.
To put this strategic principle into practice, Cuban deputies use innovative ways to organize and develop parliamentary work, guided by the rules established to that effect in the Republic's Constitution and in the National Assembly's Rules.
As established in the Constitution, the National Assembly meets twice a year for ordinary periods of sessions, and for extraordinary sessions when this is requested by one third of its members or if it is convened by the Council of State
A mechanical, superficial comparison between how the Cuban parliament works and the practices followed in the legislative bodies of countries with representative democracy will inevitably lead to the wrong conclusions. Our friends worry that the time allotted for sessions is insufficient for the Cuban supreme legislative body to carry out its exalted mission. And the enemies of the Revolution take advantage of any opportunity to denigrate the Cuban democratic system.
If we must make comparisons, the first and most important thing to bear in mind is content not form, since it is the latter, form, or the merely outward aspect, the one that the adversaries of the Cuban method use as their main argument to prove that because a Parliament is in session for 6 or 8 months a year it is more democratic than the Cuban parliament, which works in a different way. No matter how sophisticated our enemies' propaganda against our people may be, it will never succeed in its vain attempt to discredit our system and distort our reality, to turn lies into truth. We Cubans learned from José Martí that «it is the spirit of things not their appearances what we should pay attention to. What matters is the real, not the apparent».
In order to reach correct conclusions one must analyze the answers to the following questions: who are the members of the parliament and which economic and political sectors do they represent? How were the candidates proposed, nominated and elected and how much did that cost? Which laws are passed and who benefits from them? Is the people consulted when laws which decide the destiny of the nation and workers are passed? Can social organizations which represent significant sectors of the population propose bills to parliament? Can it be called an exercise in democracy to get a bill passed by a minority of the members of a Parliament manipulating the rules and regulations?
When an analysis of the social composition of parliaments in countries with representative democracy is made, it is not hard to see that many of the members, sometimes the majority of them, represent dominant oligarchies landowners, bankers, businesspeople, industrialists and, politically speaking, represent right-wing parties which never work on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed. This explains why these influential deputies always promote and back laws which guarantee their privileges and not those which might advance the interests of the working class.
As for the percentage of votes with which laws are passed, it is common practice to pass laws when there are hardly any deputies and senators present, since the leaders of the biggest parties have make some kind of agreement beforehand. The fate of members of parliament representing small or independent parties is even worse their vote counts for nought.
It is common knowledge that many decisions affecting a nation's economic and social future, or the personal life of its families are not even discussed in parliament, sometimes not even by Cabinet itself. In many countries the president, sometimes the minister of the economy, personally makes the decision to increase taxes, rents, the cost of transportation, gas and electricity, or the prices of staple food products, or decides to devalue the currency and people first hear of it through the press. Is this way of running the government and parliament an example of democracy? What difference does it make in such cases, which are all too common, if parliament meets 365 days a year? The same can be said about those occasions when the IMF grants loans but tells governments which social policies they must implement and limits the amount of government spending on health, education, and other social sectors. It is worth asking with regard to this vital point, which is the real parliament taking decisions, the IMF or the national Congresses?
In the US, a country which considers itself to be the champion of democracy, a senatorial election costs no less than $3 million. In some Latin American countries, depending on whether one is running for senator or for deputy, a candidate is forced to raise thousands or million of dollars to be able to run. We know there are two main sources for raising that money, individual contributions, which are negligible, and those from companies and organizations, which are the much larger. What happens when a company gives thousands of dollars to a candidate so that s/he can be elected? The answer is obvious: the candidate elected must work for the company's interests in the parliament and not for those of the people who voted for him or her, and this same factor will determine what kind of laws such deputies will vote for.
The Cuban answers to those same questions have the backing of popular participation in the entire electoral process and in how decision are made about the laws that are passed. Cuban deputies are not nominated by any party, but by the delegates of the municipal assemblies elected by the people themselves. This explains why the members of the National Assembly are drawn from working class people, farmers, students, artists, athletes, intellectuals, doctors, professors, members of the military, scientists and other genuine representatives of society. The National Assembly's ethnic composition reflects the racial diversity in Cuba's population. And the fact that 35.9 % of deputies are women demonstrates their importance in legislative work.
The cost of elections is borne by the state and candidates are forbidden by law to campaign. Therefore, once a candidate is nominated s/he has no need to spend a single one penny to be elected. More direct and practical methods are used to provide the electorate with information about the candidates. Biographies and photos are displayed in public places in the constituency and all the candidates together meet with the electors in public venues, workplaces, schools, universities and other educational establishments, agricultural cooperatives, and so on.
The most important laws, those affecting or concerning people in general or workers and their families in particular, are discussed beforehand in factories, farmers´ cooperatives and schools, as well as in neighbourhoods, organizations and institutions all over the country before they are debated on and passed in Parliament. Cuban deputies spend more time on these processes than any of their counterparts anywhere in the world. To illustrate this point further: when the National Assembly was to discuss what had to be done in order to deal with the economic crisis caused by the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist countries a crisis exacerbated by the US blockade and its Torricelli Act a four month long series of discussions in which more than 3 million workers were involved were held beforehand in factories, cooperatives, and students´ institutions. Can it be found in capitalist countries many examples like this, when the parliamentarians, before passing laws that impose taxes, that raise the prices of goods and services, laws that, one way or another, affect families and companies, hold prior consultations with voters? Which parliament is more democratic, that which makes decisions affecting the future of the nation and the people behind closed doors or that which goes to the people so it can make laws and take decisions together with them?
The Cuban Constitution grants the right of proposing laws not only to deputies, the Council of State, the Council of Ministers, the People's Supreme Court and the Attorney General of the Republic, but also to workers', farmers', women's and neighbourhood non-governmental organizations, and to the population in general, if the proposed law is signed in the presence of a notary by 10,000 people who are eligible to vote. This constitutional principle gives the power to initiate legislation to broad sectors of society.
Article 76 of the Constitution states that laws and resolutions passed by the National Assembly must obtain a majority of votes cast, excepting those on amendments to the Constitution itself; these need the approval of two thirds of the deputies. This prevents the use of any subterfuge to pass a bill with the votes of a minority of deputies. Since the establishment of the National Assembly, 28 years ago, all laws have been passed with more than 95 % of the deputies´ voting.
There are two other qualitative differences between the Cuban Parliament and those of other countries:
1. National Assembly is the only body in the country that can make or change the constitution. That's why there's no other body or institution above Parliament that can decide what is or is not constitutional.
2. Cuban deputies don't receive any salary for being deputies. They carry out this function as well as with their usual jobs, although they are allowed time off for performing their parliamentary functions.
The foregoing fully and clearly explains the basic concepts that Cuban deputies bear in mind when they establish the mechanisms of work of the National Assembly.
By virtue of the procedures followed by the Cuban Parliament, the time that deputies devote to performing their duties is equivalent to that spent by their colleagues in any parliament in the world. What is even more important, these procedures ensure that all members participate actively and decisively in the decisions taken by the legislative body.
Let us use practical examples to demonstrate how content and form are combined in the things Cuban deputies do and how actively involved they are in the National Assembly's work.
First of all, we will refer to what happens in the National Assembly's two ordinary sessions. Deputies meet for three to four days in their respective committees to deal with and discuss all matters within their competence. Ministers and top officials from state bodies often and as a matter of course attend these meetings to report on what they are doing and listen to the questions and comments of the deputies. As part of this same process, deputies spend a great deal of time meeting in plenary sessions so that government ministers can tell them about the work they are doing. Wide-ranging discussions take place at these sessions where critical comments and suggestions are made and all kinds of questions are posed to the ministers who must answer them there and then or soon. Once this question period is over, the Assembly moves on to a plenary session discussion of the Agenda previously passed by the deputies. This agenda includes, in the first place, issues that the Constitution itself establishes, such as matters relating to the budget, economic policy and its performance, bills, evaluation of programs and activities of the state central administration bodies, analysis and approval of Council of State's resolutions, appointing members of the Council of Ministers, election of judges and district attorneys. This Agenda also comprises subjects of current interest that were earlier proposed by the standing committees. Deputies can propose new items for the agenda when it is being discussed and passed.
What happens in ordinary or extraordinary sessions of the National Assembly? How do deputies devote themselves to the duties for a period of time equivalent to that employed by legislators in any other country?
This can be guaranteed in the first place because, the standing committee, which are appointed by the Assembly, continue to work between sessions of the National Assembly on a plan of action for the year which has been previously approved by all of the members of the committee and also includes items put forward by the president of the National Assembly. Similarly, the Parliamentary Friendship Groups remain active, keeping up contacts with Parliaments in every corner of the globe.
In order to make a rational use of each deputy's time, bearing in mind that these are not professional parliamentarians and that they therefore remain working in their usual jobs, each deputy basically carries out the tasks given to her or him by the permanent working committees in the provinces where s/he lives.
A large portion of parliamentary time is used no less than twice a year when a deputy has to fulfill one of his or her most important obligations, that is, to meet with their electors and learn about their opinions, demands, or even criticisms on the situation in the community or the performance of state enterprises and institutions. In these meetings, deputies must also explain the country's key problems to the people. There are a series of these meeting which take place over a two or three month period.
Furthermore, the deputy must participate in the ordinary sessions of the People's Power Assembly in the municipality where s/he was elected. These must be hold no less than 4 times a year. According to the law, the deputy has to account for her/his work before the Municipal Assembly once during her or his term of office and whenever s/he is asked to do so.
The Cuban deputy, as an active agent of society and a dynamic element in the political system, remains closely linked to all of the factors which determine the characteristics of every situation faced by the country, and because of this, participates systematically in meetings held by workers, farmers and students, visits factories, schools and agricultural cooperatives and meets with leaders of state enterprises and bodies and with many other representatives from local and national civil society organization.
At this stag, deputies carry out some legislative work that only they can do. They meet systematically in their committees sometimes with all the other representatives who live in the same province to give their opinions on and to evaluate the bills to be presented in the ordinary sessions of the National Assembly.
There are three other essential elements which reinforce the democratic character of the Cuban parliament and which are not present in other parliaments in other political systems.
According to the provisions of the Electoral Law, 1 deputy is elected for every 20,000 inhabitants or fraction thereof that is greater than 10,000; this makes members of the Cuban parliament very representative of and makes them very accessible to the people. In addition, more than 50% of deputies must be delegates from electoral constituencies (which have a population of 600 to 3000 inhabitants); this gives a profoundly popular characteristic to the National Assembly which is evident in the discussions which take place there and in the content of its resolutions. Today, the Assembly has 609 deputies of whom around 300 of them work directly and permanently in the neighbourhoods.
It is important to add that all Cuban municipalities are represented in Parliament by no less than 2 deputies. This ensures that the voice and interests of all parts of the country are represented when decisions that can affect their development and the solutions to their problems are taken. It is one of the factors that gives the National Assembly a truly national vision and scope.
Article 89 of the Constitution states: «the Council of State is the body of the National Assembly of People's Power which represents it between periods of sessions, implements its resolutions and in addition carries out any other task entrusted to it by the Constitution.» Its powers include being able to convene extraordinary sessions of the National Assembly, to set the date for elections, to issue decree-laws, to give, whenever necessary, a general, binding interpretation of existing laws, the ability to initiate legislation, to make all preparations for holding any referendum authorised by the National Assembly of People's Power. It also lies within the Council of State's competence to appoint and replacing ambassadors; in many countries this lies within the exclusive competence of just one person, the president.
It can be seen that because of this Constitutional provision, even when the National Assembly is not in session, the legislative activity and other important tasks that lie within its competence are not put on hold. It must also be borne in mind that the Council of State is elected by the National Assembly, has 31 members, all deputies, and works collegially.
It is essential that those who like to make superficial and unsubstantiated comparisons about the workings of the Cuban Parliament understand that the many factors that illustrate the genuinely democratic nature of the National Assembly of People's Power of the Republic of Cuba, include the fact that the laws it passes cannot be vetoed by the government nor the president; neither can the government nor the president dissolve it, as it so frequently happens in many countries with a system of representative democracy.
It has become commonplace, a dogma in fact, for many of the Cuban Revolution's detractors to use the fact that Cuba has only one political party to criticise the Cuban political system and parliament. To these ideologues, defenders of a single line of thought, a multiparty system, is synonymous with democracy. It doesn't matter if there are only two parties and if there's no difference between them, as in the United States. It doesn't matter if, as happens in most Latin American countries, only 12% of the population, at most 27%, say they trust political parties. Neither does it matter that in the last presidential elections in this region, the rate of abstention in some countries reached over 50 %.
It is scandalous, degrading, and totally foreign to the true concept of democracy, that in the name of the multiparty system what happens in numerous Latin American countries is tolerated; in those countries it is viewed as normal that a deputy or senator who is elected as a member of one party become a member of another, even of one whose ideology is absolutely opposed to that of the previous party ever before s/he takes her or his seat in parliament. There have even been cases of some deputies changing parties six times during one mandate. What a beautiful example of democracy, when the will of electors is ignored, when they are instead cheated and the banners of political parties serve only to satisfy personal ambitions or favour the alliances and interest of top party bosses.
How democratic is the practice of the top leaderships of parties when they appoint the candidates that they want and decide in advance who will be elected by deciding the order of names on the ballot paper?
It is true that in Cuba there is only one political party, which is why those who want Cuba to go back to being subordinated to the United States government, as was guaranteed by the multiparty system before 1959, or who want it to be annexed to the giant from the North never tire of saying that all Cuban deputies are appointed by the Communist Party, using this blatant lie to qualify as antidemocratic the Cuban National Assembly.
As we said earlier, the law prohibits the Party from proposing candidates, candidates for constituency delegates are freely proposed by the people in an open, public, transparent process in which more than 80 % of electors take part. Moreover, since it is not the aim of this booklet to go into great detail about the Cuban electoral system, we will simply add that candidates for delegate to the provincial assemblies and deputies to the National Assembly of People's Power are nominated by the municipal assemblies, and that it is the people who elects them through free, direct and secret vote and that to be elected they must receive more than 50 % of valid votes cast.
What we want to stress now is that each Cuban deputy acts as an individual in the debates and when voting in the Parliament. In contrast to what happens in the parliaments of other nations, no previous meetings are held by a party with its members to give them instructions about what they should say or how they should vote. Cuban deputies don't have to account for their actions to the party, but, as stated by the law, solely and exclusively to their electors and to the Assembly of People's Power of the municipality where s/he was elected.
Cuban members of parliament don't have to discuss what committees they parties should chair or which laws their party should propose or defend, let alone if they should vote against the budget presented by the government because it does not advance the party's interests. What Cuban deputies do discuss from their own point of view and obeying their own principles, are the measures to be taken to continue developing the country's economy, to improve the quality of education and health services, to optimize the usage of the nation's resources; they discuss the issues which ensure no citizen remains unprotected, that there is a growing standard of equity, social justice, and educational level among the population. Furthermore, they discuss how to continue to confront and win the economic war and overcome the permanent hostility of the US government, how to improve and increase the country's defences and what else can be done to ensure the Five Cuban Heroes who are political prisoners in US jails return to their motherland.
An analysis of these topics can be summarised follows: the multiparty system is not synonymous with democracy nor is the existence of a single party synonymous with an absence of democracy; and what is important for the people in the end is not how many parties a country should have for real democracy to exist, but if the members of parliament they have elected stand up for their legitimate rights in the parliament, if they pass laws that satisfy their reasonable expectations of economic and spiritual well-being, laws that continuously improve their standard of living, particularly standards concerning jobs, health, education, housing, and other of the people's basic needs. Nations do not care about the number of parties represented in Congress, they care about and need to know if the deputies they have elected will act for them, if they will consult them or let them be involved in the decisions taken by Parliament on any matter which affects their lives, their personal future and that of the nation. And above all, they care about always being certain that their representatives in Parliament will fight tooth and nail to defend the sovereignty and independence of their country.
All the work done by Cuban deputies gives them access to a very wide range of information, allows them to keep their finger on the pulse of the nation, makes it possible for them to be continuously in touch with their electors and the population in general, to learn about their problems, concerns, proposals and suggestions.
Consequently, they are sufficiently well-prepared to participate in the debates on every topic presented to the standing committees and to the sessions of the National Assembly. This allows means that when they speak in the parliament they speak with authority and contribute, enrich, support, or ask questions empowered by knowledge.
For that same reason, their votes in the Assembly are also a quality votes, outcome of the popular wisdom, of the people's intelligence, of the many times they were consulted, of the expression of the opinions, aspirations and will of all Cubans.
Of course, the work done by Cuban members of parliament and the importance of their role, as well as the broad and far-reaching work of the National Assembly of People's Power of the Republic of Cuba is far more richer and more all- embracing than can be explained in these few lines; their aim is to introduce, to give a summary which can be read quickly and understood easily, of the most important aspects of how the Cuban Parliament works.
The key message is that it is possible to have parliamentary system other than the one existing today in capitalist countries and that this system, moreover, can be profoundly democratic.
Those who read this book, in an unprejudiced way and with an honest interest in learning about the manner in which the cornerstone of the Cuban political system, the National Assembly of People's Power (Parliament) works, will realize that there exists in Cuba, both conceptually and in practice, a form of democracy which is increasingly participative, which encourages constant interaction between deputies and electors, between Parliament and people and society, thus making the way the National Assembly of People's Power works, though different from that of other Parliaments, not only democratic but also efficient and of definite use to the nation. In addition, they will learn of the Cuban people's and their deputies determination to continue to improve it.
In the year in which these lines are written, the National Assembly of People's Power of the Republic of Cuba will celebrate 28 years of existence and the 135th anniversary of the First Legislative Assembly. During all this time, the United Sates has assembled mountains of lies and falsehoods to justify their plans of turning Cuba into a member state of its empire and to try to prove that there's no democratic system in our country. It has been unable to achieve either of these goals. If it has always been powerful and today has become the most powerful nation on earth, why has it not been able to achieve its goals? This is a very good question that anyone interested in the destiny of Cuba should ask her or himself. The answer was provided over a century ago by José Martí when he spoke of governments that could not be removed by outside influences: «Only those forms of government which emerge from a nation can put down roots there», and leaving a definition for posterity of the freedom Cubans have always defended he said: «…Without freedom, as without one's own, vital air, nothing can survive». «Freedom is essential to live.»
Author: Jorge Lezcano Pérez
Editing: Ra Cuesta Gutiérrez
Cover Design: Josefina Riverón del Pino
Design and Digital Typesetting: Iraida Fernández Fariñas
Cover Photo: Armando González Fernández
People's Power Editions Calle 42 No. 2308
Playa, Ciudad de La Habana
Cuba