Cuba uses media blitz to promote ‘yes’ vote on new LGBT-friendly laws

By Marc Frank and Dave Sherwood

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cubans will solid ballots this Sunday on whether or not to approve a brand new ‘household code’ that might legalize homosexual marriage and increase girls’s rights, with the federal government urging residents to vote “sure” regardless of anger over the worst financial disaster in a long time.

The Communist-run authorities – lengthy the vanguard of Latin America’s left – has within the final week flooded state-run media with tales and celebratory photos selling a vote in favor of the code.

The marketing campaign has included promotional spots on radio and TV, eye-catching roadside billboards touting range, rallies alongside Havana’s picturesque Malecon oceanfront esplanade, and tweets from President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who has known as a “sure” vote a vote “in favor of democracy.”

The brand new, 100-page code would cement Cuba’s legal guidelines round progressive social coverage: legalizing same-sex marriage and civil unions, permitting same-sex {couples} to undertake youngsters, and selling equal sharing of home rights and duties.

However analysts consulted by Reuters stated the vote carries extra baggage at a time when the federal government – saddled by U.S. sanctions and the lingering impacts of the coronavirus pandemic – is struggling to offer sufficient meals, drugs, gasoline and electrical energy to its folks.

“The difficulty is that many individuals will vote… in protest or in loyalty to the federal government, way more than on content material,” stated Bert Hoffmann, a Latin America knowledgeable on the German Institute of World and Space Research.

“And that might be a disgrace,” he stated.

There aren’t any dependable opinion polls in Cuba, however traditionally referendums within the nation have handed by enormous majorities and with a greater than 90% turnout. Sunday’s vote, nevertheless, would be the first of its sort since cellular web was legalized in December 2018, which has allowed dissenting views to unfold extra extensively.

It’ll even be the primary vote since widespread protests final 12 months provided a glimpse of rising – and unprecedented – unrest and anger with the federal government over financial hardship.

“It is going to be a vote to punish the regime,” wrote Madrid-based Cuban Yunior Garcia in a latest column for 14ymedio, the web newspaper of Yoani Sanchez, a distinguished Cuban dissident.

Garcia stated this was not the time to assist a state-sponsored initiative. Anger on the authorities, he predicted, would merge with conventional, male-dominated “machista” tradition and evangelical opposition to sink the code.

However Rafael Hernandez, one in all Cuba’s main political thinkers and editor of the avant garde journal Temas, warned that mixing points just like the economic system and household code was a mistake.

“If the (political opposition) helps human rights, they need to assist the code too,” Hernandez informed Reuters in an interview in Havana. He known as the code “audacious” and “a leap ahead for human rights” in Cuba.

“Politicizing the code is a means of making an attempt to additional polarize the nationwide scenario… however I feel most Cubans perceive the code is of their curiosity,” he stated.

STICKING POINTS

The code has been mentioned for months in highly-publicized grass-roots conferences during which greater than 50% of the nation’s 11.2 million residents participated, a dialogue the federal government says has assured the voice of the folks has been heard.

Probably the most vocal and arranged opposition has come from Christians – Catholics, Methodists and evangelists.

Cuba’s Catholic Bishops Convention final week criticized the inclusion of homosexual marriage within the code, amongst different components, in a missive learn from pulpits throughout the Caribbean island nation.

“We’re upset that these and different proposals that have been strongly questioned by society stay intact within the code,” the letter said.

However Ariel Suarez, Deputy Secretary of the Convention of Catholic Bishops, informed Reuters the federal government’s pushing of the “sure” vote on state-run media had drowned out their voice.

“The Church hasn’t had entry to these retailers,” Suarez stated.

For a lot of strange Cubans, although, the proposed rule change is welcome.

Betty Pairol, 33, who took half on Saturday in an occasion on Havana’s Malecon organized by the Union of Younger Communists, stated the code’s enhanced protections for girls have been long-deserved.

“This code will assure our rights,” she stated. “It strikes a blow to patriarchy.”

(Reporting by Marc Frank, Nelson Acosta and Dave Sherwood, extra reporting by Anett Rios and Mario Fuentes, Modifying by Rosalba O’Brien)