By Sinan Dogan
BOGOTA, Colombia (AA) - Cuba’s electoral body has announced the results of the parliamentary elections in which over 6 million Cubans cast their vote.
In a news conference, Alina Balseiro, the president of the National Electoral Council, announced the voter turnout in the parliamentary elections held on March 26 as almost 76% which corresponds to over 6 million voters.
Balseiro said while 5.56 million votes were counted as valid, around 383,000 votes were blank and 215,000 votes were deemed invalid.
Popular Power and the Government will be represented in the legislature with 25.11%, general and higher education workers 10.85%, food producers, farmers, sugar producers and peasants 10.65%, health and pharmaceutical industry representatives 8.94%, she said.
She said that 226 of the elected deputies were women, 93 were young people under the age of 35 and 167 deputies were reelected.
There were only 470 candidates for the 470 seats in the parliament – one candidate for each seat – overwhelmingly from the Communist Party.
The vote came at a time when Cuba is going through the worst economic crisis in decades, with shortages of food, blackouts, a wave of migration, inflation and crippling US sanctions.
Opponents in and out of the country have been carrying out a campaign for weeks to encourage electoral abstention as a way of protesting the precarious situation the island is going through.