It is a totally unprecedented exercise for the Cuban dictatorship since the Castro revolution of 1959. For the first time, this Sunday, September 25, the authorities will submit a law to a referendum which reforms the Family Code.
This law is controversial, especially because it provides for the marriage of persons of the same sex, but also adoption, medically assisted procreation and surrogacy – the latter under certain very strict conditions.
Originally, the text was to be included in the new Constitution of 2019, but the government had backed down at the last moment in a country that is still very macho and Christian – mainly Catholics and more and more Evangelicals. The regime’s apparatchiks were themselves very divided on the subject.
“A vote for democracy”
If the text is approved, which is hardly in doubt for lack of an independent electoral monitoring authority, the regime will be able to boast of being an example in Latin America. If, by unlikely surprise, it is rejected, the dictatorship will exhibit this “democratic” exercise.
Thus, the independent site 14 intervene écrit :
“The worst thing is that if the no wins, the power will say that it is not concerned, that it has done what it could. He will accuse the opposition of being backward, far-right, fascist, ultra-conservative.”
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, also First Secretary of the Part