Popular Participation in Cuba's Constitution

Cuba's state newspaper Granma announced that the drafting commission for the new constitution met to hear the results of popular feedback. The idea is to show how every single Cuban had a say somehow in this document, not unlike how 99.9% of Cubans voted for Fidel.

The Commission was informed of results from the recently concluded popular consultation, during which 133,681 meetings were held, with 8,945,521 persons attending.

That is a lot of people. Let's just say they aren't double counting. That is 80.5% of the entire population. Since 1.8 million Cubans are 14 years old or younger, they government is claiming that pretty much 100% of all Cubans aged 15 and older participated. Take that as you will.

In these meetings, 1,706,872 citizens spoke, making 783,174 proposals, (666,995 modifications, 32,149 additions, 45,548 eliminations, and 38,482 requests for clarification).

I am not sure what to make of this. The idea of too many chefs spoiling the soup hardly seems to fit. What if you have hundreds of thousands, even millions, of chefs?

Since Raúl Castro is the head of this committee, common sense and Occam's razor alike would suggest that there is in fact one chef, with a tiny handful of sous-chefs. But the image of popular input sure is pretty.