IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 8 ENGLISH | Page 151

The latter is recognized and included as
mechanism of defensive violence. In principle and by nature, the political and civic
resolution of conflicts must be given through
the mechanisms that the sovereign can and
should legitimately establish. In terms of
constitutional technique, it’s even more
serious that this article smuggles a different
and superior source of both legitimacy and
law in order to superimpose it over the
citizens. The appeal to a pre-revolutionary
order, which chronologically precedes the
constitution, takes away the sovereignty of
the State or simply establishes it around its
very existence, not outside the State, as
befits any modern constitutional state. Thus
the sovereignty of the citizen is reduced to
dust and the constitutional legitimacy ends
up in the aberration that the sovereign is not
sovereign to change the order and the regime granted by itself as sovereign. There is
a double contradiction. The right to act is
denied to the sovereign and the latter unfolds as an ungraspable ultimate entity with
such a right, id est: the sovereign ceases to
exist in the same and only article that recognizes its supreme legitimacy. This analysis
requires further development, but pointing it
out is enough to demonstrate the connection
with the basic proposal by # Otro18 and the
need for consistent reforms in both the legal
and the constitutional order. It is also very
necessary for another strategic goal: to
reinforce the culture of law, the supremacy
of law, and the relationship between political facts and legal structures. In modern
terms, it is important to go from the law to
the facts, avoiding the opposite course
whenever possible.
What does Article 5 say?
“The Communist Party of Cuba, Martiano
and Marxist-Leninist, the organized vanguard of the Cuban nation, is the superior
leading force of the society and the State,
organizing and guiding the common efforts
aimed at the highest goals of the construc-

tion of socialism and advancement toward
the communist society.” This article is as
structural as structuring. It poses the issue of
the essential plurality for developing an
electoral law and a democratic electoral
system based on fair, free, and competitive
elections that make possible the rationality
inherent to the deliberation among citizens.
This article is the conclusive evidence and
the manifest will of a State different from
and standing above society. It is racist in
two ways: the article establishes a cultural
superiority over the multiple views that set
up Cuban nationality and it sustains hegemonies anchored in a minority over the rest of
society. This moral indecency should be
addressed to ensure that the constitutional
and electoral reforms will be consistent with
the rights of the majority, the fundamental
freedoms, and the diversity expressed in the
growing demands of the citizens. Reforming
this article is the key for modernizing and
democratizing the State. The access of the
citizens to power can neither be mediated in
an exclusive manner nor ideologically represented by the State. A government may be
ideological, but not a State. Hence the importance to remove the ideological shields of
the constitution in order to turn it into a real
civic realm. However, the article could be
read in terms of minimum policy for advancing the pluralism from the restrictive
political system established by the constitution. A constitutional and legal principle
prescribes that what is not expressly prohibited is allowed; thus, it is possible to open
the game of political plurality, since the
Communist Party is the "superior leading
force", not the only force. The historical
praxis of a single party was never legitimized by the constitution. It´s not today
either. Only the factual party-state in the

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