Trappings of Election

Havana displayed all the trappings of free election. Lampposts and palm trees blossomed with posters and pictures; fist-shaking candidates appealed nightly over TV; Cuban radios boomed their promises. The government announced that 72% of the island republic's 2,870,678 eligible voters had picked up their voting permits. And around the country the polls were provided with enclosed booths where the voter could even split his ticket, deposit it in a sealed ballot box.

But Cuba was only going through the motions. Between them. Dictator Fulgencio Batista and Rebel Chief Fidel Castro had throttled all chances of democratic process in this week's presidential election. Cuba's Supreme Electoral Tribunal, sitting as arbiter of election disputes, is a Batista tool. Batista's cops are everywhere; his rubber-stamp Congress 13 times in 23 months has suspended the freedoms of speech, press and assembly --all requisites to honest electioneering. Newspapers, radio and TV are censored, and when one candidate called Batista a dictator, the station automatically censored it out.

Where Batista's mailed gauntlet was absent, Castro's brass knuckles took over. His gunmen hijacked still another Cubana airliner, this time with seven U.S. nationals aboard, forced it to crash-land in Nipe Bay. Early reports put the dead at 17 of 20 passengers and crew. In the backlands where rebel bands roam more or less at will, candidates were terrorized. They could not make campaign speeches, shake hands, or get before the people in any fashion, except from the safety of heavily guarded TV stations. A few were shot down. In Oriente province, balloting was virtually impossible. In a frenzy of rage, Castro laid ambushes along the major highways. Burnt-out cars and buses studded the roads, and Santiago, capital of Oriente, was virtually cut off. To make his point clear, Castro got on the rebel radio and warned: "The orders to the people for Nov. 3 are: Do not go outside. The people must show their rejection of the elections by remaining at home."

In such circumstances, the election was a bitter joke. Of the three leading candidates for President, Dr. Ramon Grau San Martin, 71, two-time former President (1933-34, 1944-48), had no chance at all. The only chance for Carlos Marquez Sterling, 59, lawyer and economist, lay in the unlikely possibility that Batista might want a graceful exit from an uncomfortable situation. The favorite was Batista's man, Andres Rivero Aguero, 53, a longtime henchman hand-picked to succeed the dictator. At Batista's side since 1933, Rivero Aguero was one of his lieutenants in the 1952 coup, was rewarded with the Ministry of Education and last year with the title of Prime Minister.

Barring a military coup or an uprising far stronger than Castro has been able to mount thus far, Rivero Aguero was a shoo-in. Whether he would ever really run the country was another question.

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