The politics of Venezuela are conducted under what is nominally a federal presidential republic,but is in practice an authoritarian system of government. Prior to the early 1990s,Venezuela was considered an unusually long-standing and stable liberal democracy in Latin America,having transitioned to democracy in 1958. According to the V-Dem Democracy indices Venezuela was in 2023 the third least electoral democratic country in Latin America.
Elections in Venezuela are held at a national level for the President of Venezuela as head of state and head of government,and for a unicameral legislature. The President of Venezuela is elected for a six-year term by direct election plurality voting,and is eligible for re-election. The National Assembly (Asamblea Nacional) has 277 members (diputados),elected for five-year terms using a mixed-member majoritarian representation system. Elections also take place at state level and local level.
Julio Andrés Borges Junyent is a Venezuelan politician and lawyer. In the late 1990s he had a TV court show called "Justicia Para Todos" on Radio Caracas Televisión. He co-founded the party Primero Justicia in 2000 together with Henrique Capriles Radonski and Leopoldo Lopez.
The Justice First is a centre-right political party in Venezuela. Founded in 1992 as a civil association,it became a political party in 2000. Henrique Capriles was the candidate of the party in 2013 Venezuelan presidential election.
Leopoldo Eduardo López Mendoza is a Venezuelan opposition leader. He co-founded the political party Primero Justicia in 2000 with Julio Borges. López was elected mayor of the Chacao Municipality of Caracas in the regional elections held in July 2000. He is the National Coordinator of another political party,Voluntad Popular,which he founded in 2009.
Henrique Capriles Radonski is a Venezuelan politician and lawyer,who served as the 36th Governor of Miranda from 2008 to 2017.
Regional elections were held in Venezuela on 23 November 2008 to choose 22 governors and 2 metropolitan mayors. The candidates were selected for a term beginning in 2008 and ending in 2012,when the next regional elections will be held. The 2008 regional elections were the second during the government of Hugo Chávez Frías and the first since he founded the United Socialist Party.
Antonio JoséLedezma Díaz is a Venezuelan lawyer,opposition politician and former political prisoner. After unsuccessfully challenging for the leadership of Democratic Action in 1999,he founded a new party,the Fearless People's Alliance.
The president of the National Assembly is the presiding officer (speaker) of the National Assembly,Venezuela's unicameral legislature. The president's term coincides with the term of the legislature. The post has existed since the election of the first National Assembly in 2000. Before the creation of the National Assembly with the adoption of the 1999 constitution,the country's legislature was the bicameral Congress,which contained the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The last president of the Senate was Luis Alfonso Dávila,and the last president of the Chamber of Deputies was Henrique Capriles Radonski.
Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on 7 October 2012 to choose a president for a six-year term beginning in January 2013.
Popular Will is a political party in Venezuela founded by former Mayor of Chacao,Leopoldo López,who is its national co-ordinator. The party previously held 14 out of 167 seats in the Venezuelan National Assembly,the country's parliament,and is a member of the Democratic Unity Roundtable,the electoral coalition that held a plurality in the National Assembly between 2015 and 2020. The party describes itself as progressive and social-democratic,and was admitted into the Socialist International in December 2014. The party was formed in reaction to complaints of infringements of individual freedom and human rights on the part of the government of the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and his successor,Nicolás Maduro. The party attempts to bring together Venezuelans of various backgrounds who consider Chavismo oppressive and authoritarian. Popular Will self-identifies itself as "a pluralist and democratic movement" that is committed to "progress",which it defines as the realization of "the social,economic,political,and human rights of every Venezuelan." The party says its "fundamental pillars" are progress,democracy,and social action.
Parliamentary elections were held in Venezuela on 8 November. Democratic Action won a plurality of seats,winning 61 of the 207 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 21 of the 54 seats in the Senate. Voter turnout was 54.5% in the Senate elections and 52.7% in the Chamber elections.
Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on 14 April 2013 following the death of President Hugo Chávez on 5 March 2013. Nicolás Maduro—who had assumed the role of acting president since Chávez's death—was declared winner with a narrow victory over his opponent Henrique Capriles,the Governor of Miranda. Capriles had run in the previous election less than a year before,losing to Chávez by an 11-point margin. This time the margin of victory was much smaller,and thus became the closest presidential election of the country since the 1968 election.
Juan Requesens Martínez is a deputy of the Venezuelan National Assembly,elected in 2015 and sworn in on 5 January 2016. He was a student leader at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV),and a leader of student opposition protesters during the 2014 Venezuelan protests. He led marches opposing the Government of Venezuela under President Nicolás Maduro,seeking "to turn the student rebellion into a broader social movement".
The 2017 Venezuelan protests began in late January following the abandonment of Vatican-backed dialogue between the Bolivarian government and the opposition. The series of protests originally began in February 2014 when hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans protested due to high levels of criminal violence,inflation,and chronic scarcity of basic goods because of policies created by the Venezuelan government though the size of protests had decreased since 2014. Following the 2017 Venezuelan constitutional crisis,protests began to increase greatly throughout Venezuela.
The primary elections of the Unity Roundtable were held on February 12,2012,and determined the presidential candidate of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) for the 2012 Venezuelan presidential election,which were held on October 7,As well as their candidates in the coming regional and municipal elections,to be held in December 2012 and December 2013 respectively. These were the first open presidential primaries in the history of Venezuela,and the largest of its kind and in participation in world history.
Parliamentary elections were held in Venezuela on 6 December 2020. Aside from the 167 deputies of the National Assembly who are eligible to be re-elected,the new National Electoral Council president announced that the assembly would increase by 110 seats,for a total of 277 deputies to be elected.
Elvis Eduardo Hidrobo Amoroso is a Venezuelan politician and lawyer who currently serves as the President of the National Electoral Council since 24 August 2023. He previously served as Comptroller General of the Republic and held the presidency of the Republican Moral Council,also known as the Moral Power. In August 2017,he was elected as first and second vice president of the 2017 Constituent National Assembly and served until October 2017. He also served as a deputy to the National Assembly for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
Juan Pablo Isidoro Guanipa Villalobos is a Venezuelan lawyer and politician who served as deputy and First Vice President of the National Assembly,leader of the Justice First political party and former governor of Zulia. He was a presidential candidate in the 2018 elections until boycott. Guanipa is the regional coordinator of the Justice First party in Zulia and chairs the Maracaibo Posible foundation.
Venezuelan opposition to the Chavista governments of former President Hugo Chávez and current President Nicolás Maduro,commonly referred to as the Venezuelan opposition,or sometimes,anti-Chavismo,is a political umbrella term used to describe political,social and religious movements that have opposed Chavismo,and the associated Bolivarian Revolution political process since 2 February 1999.
