Outlasted no fewer than nine American presidents!

As Fidel Castro prepares to give his fiefdom to his brother in true feudal fashion, the BBC records the event thus: End of Castro’s half-century in power and Castro: Profile of the great survivor. It fair enough to call Castro a survivor when referring to the many American assassination attempts against him (mind you it might have been nice to have had a link back to the BBC’s own story describing credible reports that Castro returned the favour, in his case successfully), but I am a little tired of hearing him lauded for “outlasting” nine American presidents as if he were a heavyweight champion beating off challengers. Go Fidel! Your staying power really showed up those feeble Americans, with their wimpy term limits and free elections.

While thinking about such things, I amused myself by searching the BBC website for combinations of “Cuba”, “election” and “candidate”. Here are some of the reports I found:

Castro nominated for Cuban seat dates from December last year. It burbles happily away about nomination and re-election as if it were talking about a proper election where those procedures might actually give a result contrary to the wishes of those currently in power: “Cuban President Fidel Castro has been nominated as a candidate for a seat in the next National Assembly – indicating he may still hope to return to power. Mr Castro, 81, must be re-elected to the assembly if he is to remain president of the Council of State.” That brave old guy, submitting himself to the electorate… no, wait, it’s Cuba.

That story follows the tone set a month earlier in this piece: Cuba prepares for elections. It says, “But he will have to be re-elected to the national parliament if he is to remain president of the Council of State.” The tension, the tension!

A story from the “election” of January 2003 speaks of “electing 609 pro-government candidates who ran unopposed”. Someone truly on a mission to explain might have pointed that the lack of opposition was because only pro-government candidates are permitted to run, rather than leaving open the possibility that they were just loved so universally that no one wants to stand against them.

However I did find a BBC story about the Cuban elections that makes the true situation quite clear: “The Cuban government is reporting a 98 turnout for the the country’s elections – even athough there was no choice of candidates.” Pity it was ten years old.