The politics of Venezuela occurs in a framework explained in Government of Venezuela.
Democratic Action is a Venezuelan social democratic and centre-left political party established in 1941. The party played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy, leading the government during Venezuela's first democratic period (1945–1948). A decade of dictatorship under Marcos Pérez Jiménez followed, which saw AD excluded from power. With the advent of democracy in 1958, four Presidents of Venezuela came from Acción Democrática from the 1950s to the 1990s during the two-party period with COPEI.
Nicolás Maduro Moros is a Venezuelan politician who has served as the president of Venezuela since 2013.
Luciano Marín Arango, better known as Iván Márquez, is a Colombian guerrilla leader, member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), part of its secretariat higher command and advisor to the Northwestern and Caribbean blocs. He was part of the FARC negotiators that concluded a peace agreement with President Juan Manuel Santos. On 29 August 2019, Márquez abandoned the peace process and announced a renewed armed conflict with the Colombian government.
Colombia–Venezuela relations refers to the diplomatic relations between the bordering countries of Colombia and Venezuela. The relationship has developed since the early 16th century, when Spanish colonizers created the Province of Santa Marta and the Province of New Andalucia. The countries share a history for achieving their independence under Simón Bolívar and becoming one nation—the Gran Colombia—which dissolved in the 19th century. Following then, the overall relationship between the two countries has oscillated between cooperation and bilateral struggle.
The Democratic Unity Roundtable was a catch-all electoral coalition of Venezuelan political parties formed in January 2008 to unify the opposition to President Hugo Chávez's United Socialist Party of Venezuela in the 2010 Venezuelan parliamentary election. A previous opposition umbrella group, the Coordinadora Democrática, had collapsed after the failure of the 2004 Venezuelan recall referendum.
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.
Freddy Guevara is a Venezuelan political leader with a major in Communication from Andrés Bello Catholic University and a graduate certificate in Public Policy. He was elected Deputy to the Venezuelan National Assembly for Circuit 2 of the Miranda State representing the Democratic Unity Roundtable in the parliamentary elections of December 6, 2015. A key figure of the opposition to controversial Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Guevara was arrested in July 2021 for crimes against the state, although the United States and others condemned the arrest as politically-motivated; in mid-August, he was freed as part of negotiations between the Maduro government and the Venezuelan opposition.
The Lima Group is a multilateral body that was established following the Lima Declaration on 8 August 2017 in the Peruvian capital of Lima, where representatives of 12 countries met in order to establish a peaceful exit to the ongoing crisis in Venezuela.
Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez is a Venezuelan opposition politician. He belonged to the social-democratic party Popular Will, and was a federal deputy to the National Assembly representing the state of Vargas. On 23 January 2019, Guaidó and the National Assembly declared that he was acting president of Venezuela, starting the Venezuelan presidential crisis by challenging Nicolás Maduro's presidency. In December 2022, opposition parties voted to dismiss Guaidó as interim president, choosing Dinorah Figuera as a successor on 5 January 2023 and ending Guaidó's presidential claim.
The Venezuelan presidential crisis was a political crisis concerning the leadership and the legitimate president of Venezuela between 2019 and 2023, with the nation and the world divided in support for Nicolás Maduro or Juan Guaidó.
Gustavo Tarre Briceño is a Venezuelan politician, lawyer, author, professor of constitutional law and politic science, and representative to the Organization of American States (OAS).
The International Conference on the Situation in Venezuela was a meeting of states which occurred in Montevideo, Uruguay, on 7 February 2019 to address the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis about the legitimacy of claims to the Venezuelan presidency by Juan Guaidó and Nicolás Maduro. The conference was jointly sponsored by the governments of Mexico and Uruguay; other participating countries included Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Panama, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, forming the International Contact Group on Venezuela.
Edgar José Zambrano Ramírez is a Venezuelan lawyer and politician that currently serves as a National Assembly deputy for the Lara state. From January 5, 2019 to January 5, 2020, he served as First Vice President of the Assembly. He was President of the Permanent Defense and Security Parliamentary Commission between 2016 and 2018. He is the vice president of the opposition political party Democratic Action.
During the presidential crisis between the Venezuelan governments of Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó, a coalition of Colombia, Brazil, the United States and the Netherlands attempted to bring essential goods as a response to shortages in Venezuela. The three main bases used for the operation are: the Colombian city of Cúcuta, the Brazilian state of Roraima,, and the island of Curaçao, of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
During the Venezuelan presidential crisis concerning the legitimate President of Venezuela, reactions and responses to the crisis were greatly divided.
The negotiations during the crisis in Venezuela are the negotiation and dialogue attempts and processes between the government of Nicolás Maduro and the Venezuelan opposition. Although numerous dialogue processes and roundtables have taken place, by 2023 none had been effective in achieving a solution to the country's crisis.
On 30 April 2019, during the Venezuelan presidential crisis, a group of several dozen military personnel and civilians joined Juan Guaidó in his call for the removal of Nicolás Maduro as part of what he labeled "Operation Freedom". Reuters reported an "uneasy peace" by the afternoon of 30 April. During the unrest, opposition leader Leopoldo López was freed from house arrest after being imprisoned for five years. Manuel Cristopher Figuera, the head of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service, denounced the Maduro government and was dismissed from his position before going into hiding. At least 25 military men who opposed Maduro sought asylum at the Brazilian embassy in Caracas.
Presidential elections are scheduled to be held in Venezuela by 2024 to choose a president for a six-year term beginning on 10 January 2025. Leading opposition candidates have been disqualified from participating in the election during campaign or in previous elections. In June 2023, the leading candidate María Corina Machado was barred from participating by the Venezuelan government for alleged political crimes. This move has been regarded by the opposition as violation of political human rights and has been condemned by international bodies like the Organization of American States, the European Union, and Human Rights Watch, as well as countries such as Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Chile, Canada, France and Mexico.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Venezuela was a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The first two cases in Venezuela were confirmed on 13 March 2020; the first death was reported on 26 March. However, the first record of a patient claiming to have symptoms of coronavirus disease dates back to 29 February 2020, with government officials suspecting that the first person carrying the virus could have entered the country as early as 25 February.
