HAVANA, (AFP) — Parliament will likely ratify a constitutional amendment making socialism “inalienable”, after the proposal was signed by more than eight million Cubans, said National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon.

“It will be backed (by the parliament) as a genuinely democratic (National) Assembly must do,” Alarcon said Thursday during a solemn ceremony in Revolution Square.

There, under the statue of Cuban national hero, Jose Marti, the 8,188,198 signatures were delivered to the National Assembly, after some 99.25 per cent of the voting population signed on to the initiative.

The proposed amendment to the constitution of the Americas’ only communist nation seeks to “expressly state the will of the people that the economic, political and social rules in the republic’s constitution are untouchable,” according to a copy of the text.

It adds that “economic, diplomatic and political relations with any other nation will never be negotiated under aggression, threat or pressure by a foreign power.”

The proposal is to be reviewed by the National Assembly on July 5.

Members of the country’s illegal but tolerated dissident groups have charged that the petition, which allowed only a ‘yes’ vote, or abstention, and no debate, was meant to head off Cuban aspirations for democracy — notably Project Varela, a petition bearing more than 11,000 signatures that seeks a referendum on political pluralism and market-minded economic change.

From Saturday until Tuesday, 130,000 tables were set up around the country to encourage the 8.25 million Cubans over the legal voting age of 16 to support the amendment to enshrine socialism — the country’s ruling ideology for the past 43 years — in Cuba’s constitution forever.

In a televised ceremony Saturday Cuban President Fidel Castro had put his name to a copy of the constitutional amendment he says was the project of mass organisations, not his government.

Members of the country’s dissident groups said the “referendum” was a transparent ploy to foil Cuban aspirations to democracy.

Meanwhile, in Washington Cuban dissident, Osvaldo Paya, Project Varela organiser, was chosen along with the Organisation of American States to share the 2002 Democracy Prize, the US National Democratic Institute, which bestows the award, said in a statement.

Paya, who will collect his award before yearend in Washington, was chosen in recognition “of his brave leadership of Project Varela,” which demands that the Cuban government hold a referendum on free elections, freedom of expression, freeing of political prisoners, and freedom of assembly.

The project, named in honour of Cuban independence hero Felix Varela, a Catholic priest, was based on a loophole in the Cuban Constitution that allows groups to propose changes to laws when the request is accompanied by 10,000 or more signatures.

Even after the petition was presented to the National Assembly, the number of signatures continued to grow, and is now at about 35,000.

In the NDI press release Paya said that he felt “honoured to receive this prize in name of all Cubans who fight for reform”.

“The international attention and solidarity help to recognise the thousands of Cubans that work on this initiative. I hope to be able to travel to Washington to receive the prize personally,” Paya said.