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Cuba is a one-party state controlled by the Communist Party of Cuba and its leader, Fidel Castro, who has been in power since 1959. There has not been a free election in Cuba since 1952. Elections in 1954 were aborted by a coup staged by Fulgencio Batista, who ruled as a dictator until he was overthrown by Castro. The Communist Party is the sole legal party, and no overt opposition to the Castro regime is tolerated.
Cuba has a national legislature, the National Assembly of People's Power (Asamblea Nacional de Poder Popular), which has 609 members, replaced every five years through a process of "election" in which voters in each electoral district are offered only one candidate. This candidate is either a member of, or acceptable to, the Communist Party. The last such "elections" were held according on 19 January 2003. All the 609 candidates who ran uncontested for the National Assembly were elected.
Suffrage is afforded to Cuban citizens resident for two years on the island who are aged over sixteen years and who have not been found guilty of a criminal offence.
Municipal elections
Municipal assemblies are elected every two and a half years. In theory, municipal elections are non-partisan, but in practice, all candidates must be acceptable to the Communist Party, and no candidate can express overt opposition to the Castro government or to the communist system.
The turnout in the previous municipal elections was reported to be 95.76%. After a massive campaign to get more people to vote, Justice Minister Roberto Diaz Sotolongo of Cuba's National Electoral Commission reported that approximately 8.2 million Cubans of the country's population of approximately 11 million elected 169 municipal assemblies on Sunday 17 April, 2005.