The Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba (CTDC)a platform of opposition to the government of Cubahas undertaken a campaign to generate a new regulatory framework to end the single-party system by which the island is governed.

Manuel Cuesta Morúa, president of the Cuban opposition group, told Martí Noticias that they have summoned 21 specialists and jurists to draft a first draft of the constitutional reform, which must be approved at a council meeting.

“It is important that we defend and assume political pluralism. Our dilemma is Cuba or nothing, not the single party or nothing,” Cuesta told the Cuban diaspora.

The CTDC leader added that the organization will hold about fifteen citizen assemblies in various provinces of Cuba to learn the opinion of the population and also proposals from citizens for the constitutional article that they seek to change.

The CTDC was born in June 2021 and is an association of democratic organizations and parties that operates inside and outside the island to establish a common front for the transition to a democratic system. The birth of the Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba occurred at a relevant moment in Cuba’s recent history, as it took place shortly after Raúl Castro left the leadership of the PCC.

The group played an important role during the massive protests in July of that same year and during that turbulent period its first president, José Daniel Ferrer, was arrested, who remains imprisoned to the present. Since then, Manuel Cuesta assumed the leadership of the CTDC in Cuba.

Faced with the harsh repression of critical movements, the council decided to change direction in its strategy, focusing on institutional discourse, legal reforms and international diplomacy.

In October 2022, the CTDC addressed this front by promoting the platforms Candidatos por el Cambio and Otro 18 in the local elections and presentation to the Nomination Assemblies, inspired by some successes recorded in 2015 with independent candidates from neighborhoods in Havana. However, this was opposed by the Cuban Electoral Commission, which vetoed the participation of candidates from the sphere of influence of these groups.

Although real participation in the management of the State was not achieved, these incidents sent an important message within Cuba that the elections did not have real free participation, as the government defended.

It was also at this time that the CTDC denounced that Cuba’s new Penal Code illegalized the financing of civil society and journalistic entities, while at the same time giving the regime tools to persecute those who questioned the government, including the entities that made up the Council.

On the diplomatic front there was also progress by bringing to debate in the European Union the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (ADPC) that the multinational entity maintained with Cuba. The treatment of critics of the Castro government and political prisoners was a key part of this agenda.

Over the last year, the Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba has sought to address the constitutional flank in the midst of an aggravated energy crisis on the island and a new migration crisis. The latest statement about the project to modify the Constitution to end the one-party system is part of this strategy.

With the eyes of Donald Trump and Marco Rubio on the island, the CTDC demonstrated in April demanding to have “a chair of its own” for Cuban civil society in the middle of the negotiations between Washington and Havana.

“Cuba is not only its State. Cuba is also its citizens, its civil society, its families, its political prisoners, its religious communities, its professionals, its reformists, its civil society and its pro-democratic community, its entrepreneurs and its diaspora,” the platform indicated in a message.

The current dialogue between the governments of Cuba and the United States does not seem to have simple solutions for now, with an additional complication being the mistrust that exists between Cuban dissidents abroad and those who live inside the island. Media such as El País in Spain have described these differences as “historical cainism” to describe the suspicion that exists between these two parts of the opposition.