Posted on Fri, Dec. 15, 2006
CUBA
Gallup poll: 47% of Cubans approve of Castro regime
An independent poll of Cubans shows they want more freedom and
opportunities, but many still support Fidel and Raúl Castro.
BY PABLO BACHELET
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com
WASHINGTON - A rare independent poll of Cubans by the U.S.-based Gallup
company shows Cubans on the island want more freedom and economic
opportunities and support the Castro brothers by a seven-point margin.
The Gallup poll released Thursday showed that 47 percent of the Cubans
polled approved the job performance of their leaders and 40 percent
disapproved.
Gallup officials said they did not seek Cuban government permission for
the poll, but that authorities made no effort to stop it.
The poll is only the second carried out by outsiders in Cuba since 1994,
when the Miami Herald commissioned CID-Gallup, the Costa Rican affiliate
of Gallup, to carry out a similar poll.
Polling in Cuba is considered sensitive because the communist government
suppresses dissent, sometimes brutally. The government monopolizes the
media and only the Communist Party is legal.
The most recent survey was conducted Sept. 1-15, well after Fidel Castro
had handed power to his brother Raúl following surgery. Castro is
reported to be suffering from terminal cancer, and has not appeared in
public since July.
The executive summary of the poll -- part of a broader project comparing
attitudes in some 130 countries, which Gallup plans to release in
portions -- describes the results as a ``fascinating portrayal of a
populace living with the paradoxes of a communist regime.''
Only one in four Cubans declared to be satisfied with their levels of
personal freedom. By contrast, four out of every five Latin Americans
said they were satisfied with their personal freedom.
Despite a barrage of criticism of U.S. policy from Cuban leaders and a
four-decade-old embargo, 44 percent of Cubans said they considered the
United States an ''ideal partner'' for more trade -- far ahead of 17
percent for second-place China and 15 percent for Venezuela.
Eric Nielsen, a spokesman for Gallup, said Cubans may be responding to
their relatives' description of America as a land of opportunity and the
Havana government's assertion that more U.S. trade would improve the
island's lot.
Only 42 percent of Cubans believed they could get ahead by working hard,
far less than the 77 percent of Latin America who held that opinion. But
Cubans held their health and educational systems in high regard. For
instance, 96 percent said healthcare was available to all regardless of
income, compared with 42 percent who felt the same way in Latin America.
Cubans also seemed less happy than their Latin American peers, with 62
percent saying they laughed or smiled a lot, compared with 82 percent
for the rest of the region. But Cubans overwhelmingly used positive
terms like creativity, friendliness and optimism to describe themselves.
The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The survey was carried out by a team of Central American supervisors and
Cuban college students who contacted 600 people in Havana and 400 in
Santiago aged 15 or older. The results were e-mailed from Internet cafes
every evening and the original documents were then burned to ensure they
did not fall into the hands of authorities. Poor infrastructure made it
impossible to conduct the survey in the rest of Cuba, organizers said.
Gallup officials said pollsters found that despite the government
controls, Cubans were still eager to respond to questioners, who spent
up to one hour in each home.
To maintain a low profile, the poll takers avoided the homes of the
neighborhood chiefs of Cuba's notorious Committees for the Protection of
the Revolution.
The Miami Herald's CID/Gallup poll in 1994 showed that only 3 percent of
those surveyed identified politics as Cuba's main problem, 38 percent
said freedom was the most important value for society and 50 percent
chose equality.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/cuba/16243562.htm
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