Above Photo: Granma.
Cuba dawned today with great expectation for the long-awaited news: The Family Code will be law, after the majority of Cubans supported the document during the popular Referendum held on Sunday.
Early this morning, the president of the National Electoral Council (CEN), Alina Balseiro Gutiérrez, announced in a live broadcast that the preliminary results of the vote count has affirmed that the Code will be law.
The count at this point has determined that 3,936,790 of the 6,251,786 Cubans who went to the polls voted Yes for the document (66.87 percent). With most of the ballots counted, the electoral authority assured that 1,950,090 people voted NO, (33.13 percent).
“Although some constituencies in three provinces are still counting, the CEN certifies these results as valid and irreversible,” the president of the CEN said and congratulated the people for their participation in the legislative process and for the discipline and civility demonstrated during the Referendum.
“The official results will be released later today, but it can already be confirmed that the Family Code has been ratified,” she stressed.
The results are a reflection of Cuba’s need to have a new Code of Families, one that portrays the country we are and the one we want to be, that complements the humanist essences of the Constitution, and that leads us towards a fairer and more inclusive country.
The results are not a surprise. The document was submitted to a popular consultation at the beginning of 2022, and was built on the basis of almost individual experiences and needs of Cubans. Each one was a legislator with input, and expectations grew along with the document, which advocates affection and love.
However, since the Code began to be designed some conservative sectors of the country tried to incite the No, because some of the rights it extends -such as the possibility that two people of the same sex can marry or adopt children- goes against their religious beliefs.
“There are people who, by faith or creed, have not understood that the Code doesn’t deny the type of family they defend, but rather gives guarantees for other types of families,” the Cuban president said after casting his vote on Sunday.
At the same time, there were toxic campaigns on social networks and in the extreme right-wing media sponsored from U.S. Florida to incite Cubans to say No, under the argument that “supporting the bill means supporting the government.”
It is a new strategy to demonize and discredit the Cuban Revolution. “If the Code said the complete opposite of what this one says, those haters would also be criticizing it,” Diaz-Canel clarified.
“It is not a problem of convictions, reasoning, or feelings; there are people who adopt that position because they consider that if it is a Code within the Revolution, then it should not be approved,” he added.
But Cuba, with our love, and the heterogeneity of our society won. September 25, 2022, is already a historic day. Cuba proved once again that building a revolution means never stopping to search for more justice, in spite of adversities.