Who’s the dictator? Are their laws literally forced down upon the people? Is there no democratic process?
According to the constitution, Cuba is a socialist republic where all members or representative bodies of state power are elected and subject to recall and the masses control the activity of the state agencies, the deputies, delegates and officials. Elections in Cuba have two phases:
election of delegates to the Municipal Assembly, and election of deputies to the National Assembly. Candidates for municipal assemblies are nominated on an individual basis at local levels by the local population at nomination assemblies. Candidates for the National Assembly are nominated by the municipal assemblies from lists compiled by national and municipal candidacy commissions. Suggestions for nominations are made at all levels mainly by mass organizations, trade unions, people’s councils, and student federations. The final list of candidates for the National Assembly, one for each district, is drawn up by the National Candidacy Commission.
Cuba’s national legislature, the National Assembly of People’s Power, has 605 members who sit for five-year terms. Members of the National Assembly represent multiple-member constituencies (2 to 5 members per district), with one Deputy for each 20,000 inhabitants
Candidates for the National Assembly are chosen by candidacy commissions chaired by local trade union officials and composed of elected representatives of “mass organisations” representing workers, youth, women, students and farmers. The provincial and municipal candidacy commissions submit nominations to the National Candidacy Commission.
Article 88(h) of the Cuban constitution, adopted in 1976, provides for citizen proposals of law, prerequisite that the proposal be made by at least 10,000 citizens who are eligible to vote.
The Cuban government describes the full Cuban electoral process as a form of democracy. The Cuban Ministry of External Affairs describes the candidate-selection process as deriving from “direct nomination of candidates for delegates to the municipal assemblies by the voters themselves at public assemblies,” and points out that at the elections to the municipal assemblies, voters do have a choice of candidates. The ban on election campaigning is presented as “The absence of million–dollar election campaigns where resorting to insults, slander and manipulation are the norm.”