It's Official...

Well, the suspense is over. Yesterday, the Cuban regime finally released the official results of the National Assembly “elections” held on Jan 20. The communist has somehow managed to hold on to power for an unprecedented 49th year.

AND….all the unopposed candidates were elected! Imagine that.

The big story in this nail biter of an “election” was that Raul got more votes than his big half brother Fidel and all the other unopposed “candidates”.

The media is focusing on the percentage of votes garnered by the “candidates” because there was no election, which by definition means to choose- a crucial element missing form the Cuban “electoral” process -choice. So, since they can’t compare the winner’s percentages to loser’s percentages because there were no losers, they analyze the results of an “election” where everybody wins by who won the most. I guess it gives them something to write about. I mean that is their job-to write, to report what the regime tells them…

… Isn’t it?

There’s got to be a story in there somewhere. The story isn’t that there’s only one “legal” party and that the same party runs the elections and counts the votes and releases the official results in the “official organ” of said party, Granma. No, that’s an old story. You know, the one that makes people’s eyes roll. They’ve heard it too many times already.

Their readers want the new story. They want to be entertained with the human interest angle- and no, that doesn’t mean the humans wasting away in Castro’s gulags-that’s the old, 50 year old eye rolling story -it means the sibling rivalry of which totalitarian dictating brother got the most votes.

Their readers want some suspense. So we’ll be hearing about how the old dictator’s fate is now in the hands of the new “Parliament” made up of 614 members that were hand picked because of their loyalty to the old dictator who runs the party. That’s suspense.