Cuban lawmakers on Saturday unanimously approved a revised draft of a new constitution that retains the country’s one-party socialist system, but reflects its socioeconomic opening since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The draft constitution, which has 229 articles and would replace a Cold War-era one, is to maintain the Cuban Communist Party as the country’s guiding force and the state’s dominance of the economy, state-run media reported.
A copy has not yet been distributed to the public.
However, the document also legitimizes private business that have blossomed over the past decade, acknowledges the importance of foreign investment and opens the door to gay marriage, according to state-run media.
It imposes age and term limits on the presidency, after late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and his younger brother, Raul Castro, ruled the country for nearly six decades, and introduces the role of a prime minister.
The draft incorporates into an original one published in July hundreds of mainly small changes proposed by citizens during a three-month public consultation at community meetings nationwide.
It would go to a referendum on Feb. 24.
“This process is a genuine and exceptional demonstration of the practice of power by the people and therefore of the markedly participative and democratic nature of our political system,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel told the national assembly in a speech closing its week-long, twice-yearly session.
The 58-year-old took office from his mentor, Raul Castro, in April, although the latter remains head of the party until 2021.
Critics have said the fundamentals of Cuba’s system were never up for discussion and the government only included suggestions it wanted to.
Some, including opposition groups that typically do not mobilize many people, are already campaigning against the constitution online using the hashtag #yovotono (“I vote no”).
One of the revised articles pertains to the accumulation of property.
Whereas the first draft originally banned this, the revised constitution simply stipulates that the state must regulate it, according to state-run media.
However, the latest draft also reinserts the aim of “advancing toward communism” that was taken out of the first draft.
One controversial revision is the elimination of an article that recognized marriage as the union of two people as opposed to the union between a man and a woman as in the 1976 constitution.
That article was the one that sparked the most controversy in a society that has made great strides in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights in the past few years, but remains conservative on the topic.
The new draft removes the definition of marriage altogether, thus opening the door to same-sex union, albeit not giving it the same symbolic level of backing.
The government has instead said that it would update the family code and put it to a referendum in the next two years.
“There is no setback,” wrote Mariela Castro, the daughter of Raul Castro, who has championed LGBT rights in Cuba, on Facebook.
“The fight continues, let’s give a ‘yes’ to the constitution and then close ranks to achieve a family code as advanced as the new constitutional text,” she added.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion