Opposition leaders and dissidents are calling on the Cuban people to abstain from voting in the communist Castro dictatorship’s so-called elections scheduled to be held on Sunday. Leaders of the opposition are calling the election a farce and abstention as a means to send a political message to the regime and the world.
Opposition leaders spoke out in a Reuters article so tilted towards the communist dictatorship that it could’ve been published in the Cuban state-run newspaper Granma:
Cuba’s political opposition has accused the government of blocking or spooking its candidates for local elections this Sunday, and is calling on Cubans to abstain from voting.
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Reuters surveyed by phone five prominent opposition activists who have remained in Cuba. None of them said they had plans to participate in Sunday’s election, nor did they know of any opposition candidates who had been nominated.
“This is all a farce,” Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White dissident group, told Reuters by phone. “I don’t believe in the electoral system in Cuba.”
Many activists have called instead for Cubans to abstain from voting.
Opposition group Archipielago, whose members are primarily outside Cuba, has called on voters to stay home, spoil their ballots, or leave them blank.
“This could be a magnificent opportunity to say loudly to the regime and to the international community that the dictatorship no longer has the majorities it boasted for decades,” Archipielago said in early November.
There hasn’t been a free and fair election in Cuba since 1959, For Cubans to vote on Sunday is not only a waste of time, but it also legitimizes a brutally oppressive and corrupt communist dictatorship.