Latin American countries deserve credit for their recent denunciations of what they bluntly refer to as Venezuela’s dictatorship, but I have a hard time understanding why they don’t do the same thing with Cuba’s dictatorship. When it comes to Cuba, they all seem to look the other way.
I was thinking about this when I read about Cuba’s Oct. 22 election for municipal council members. It will be the first of several tightly controlled steps leading to the election of a National Assembly that is to decide the successor to Cuban President Raúl Castro, 86, who has vowed to step down in February 2018.
But, of course, Cuba’s National Assembly will just rubber-stamp whomever Castro picks. Cuba has been a hereditary dictatorship since 1959, when the late Cuban President Fidel Castro took power by force, and later when he became ill, he passed on the country’s government to his brother, Raúl, in 2006.
Only government supporters are allowed to participate in Cuban elections. Unlike Venezuela — which, for the sake of appearances, still tolerates opposition parties while often jailing their top leaders — Cuba is a one-party system, where only the Communist Party is legal.
READ MORE:
[contentcards url=”http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article170268522.html” target=”_blank”]