Cuba's election must be transparent

I refer to the letter from the Cuban Ambassador entitled Cuba, a place for human rights published in The Jakarta Post on May 14.

In your letter (Ambassador Miguel Ramirez), you were right to describe your democracy as differing from that of the United States, and it may well be an improvement on that country's interpretation of democracy, for after two-and-a-half millennia, democracy is still evolving.

Your system whereby Cubans elect their parliament by secret ballot every five years and the parliament-elects, also by secret ballot, the Council of ministers and president is interesting, and many people around the world would agree that the system leading up to your 1959 revolution was hardly tolerable, and your national hero Jose Marti certainly gave voice to a very relevant concern for the people of his time.

And yet you would surely understand the feelings of another country which had nuclear missiles aimed at it, three years after your revolution.

In this context it is also worth remembering that just 100 years ago the navy of that same country was driving off German battleships bombarding Venezuela.

However, with the importance of Florida in the U.S. 2000 elections, and the possibility of that state having a similar influence on the result of the U.S 2004 elections, perhaps you are considering the potential power Florida' electors could wield in relation to Cuba. In terms of examining Cuba' democratic system it is worth reviewing the words of the man known to history as the Great Elector, Frederick William, great-grandfather of Frederick the Great.

The Great Elector taught his people to put the state before the individual and regarded himself as its first servant. If your president, whom you so charmingly and democratically refer to as Fidel, has encouraged such a scenario in Cuba, perhaps he could also embrace the spirit of world peace that Libya is now espousing.

We have an opportunity at this time to put aside many of the problems which beset our planet in the last century. Thank you Ambassador for your thought provoking letter, although in this writer's opinion, the parliamentary vote is best held with complete transparency, as in the Indonesian model.

Other countries considering a greater degree of democracy for their people, such as Australia, could well consider a similar model.

GREG WARNER, Jakarta