Listen, I know modern media made us jaded and mistrusting by default, so this might get brushed under carpet as "Well all politicians lie." but countries like Cuba take propaganda to another level.

The default stance when reading any of their official news source, as it was in Czechoslovakia several decades ago, is to believe the opposite.

And all news sources are official news sources. There are no evil capitalists, remember? So no privately owned printers, TV studios etc. By default everything is state owned or controlled. And state has a single party in charge, by law.

Calling any process in that sort of state "democratic" is about as sensible as calling Amazon union friendly.

Actually, that's a fitting analogy. Consider a company town, single employer, running everything. Mayor and councilors are managers on company payroll. And nobody can start a new business unless they have a go ahead from them. The town also makes it's own laws. By the way, the town has a jail and people can be, and routinely are, locked up in there for disagreeing with how things are run.

What kind of democratic debate can you have in a place like that?