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| Presidency of Jaime Lusinchi 2 February 1984 –2 February 1989 | |
| Party | Democratic Action |
|---|---|
| Seat | Miraflores Palace,Caracas |
 Presidential Standard (1970-1997) | |
Jaime Lusinchi served as President of Venezuela from 1984 to 1989 for Democratic Action.
The adecos chose Jaime Lusinchi and Caldera once more stood up for his party COPEI. The divided socialists offered Teodoro Petkoff and JoséVicente Rangel. Petkoff had broken with the Communist Party and,with the veteran leader Pompeyo Márquez,had founded in 1971 the Movement for Socialism (MAS in Spanish),which was more or less inspired by the Prague Spring,when Czech communists tried to liberalize their country in 1968. [1] MAS was still Marxist but edging to left of center. Rangel was the son of a general during the Gómez autocracy,but he entered politics in 1958 as a moderate leftist. Rangel denounced the abuses of the adeco governments of Betancourt and Leoni—he accused them of allowing the secret police and the army to torture detainees—and he was the MAS presidential candidate in 1973 and 1978,both times doing badly. Teodoro was particularly disliked by adeco pardos. Teodoro was always trying to displace Rangel as his party's choice and finally,in 1983,the two men had a chance to test each other's popularity.
Much of the campaign was taken up by an "underground" debate about Lusinchi's mistress,Blanca Ibañez,and adecos insisted that his legal wife had simply "to bite the bullet". When the results were in,bipolarity worked and the adecos proved that they still had the pardos on their side by garnering 56% of the vote,the highest margin ever in a Venezuelan election. Caldera was down,but,as we shall see,definitely not out. But there were two novelties in the results:although Petkoff got more votes than Rangel,together they got 7% of the vote,which the left had never before achieved,although it is questionable whether Teodoro at that point was in any way the radical he had been before. Another result was that abstentions were 12% and this was significant because,as we saw,voting was compulsory in Venezuela and by and large Venezuelans had been very dutiful in this respect,and now they showed that not voting was catching on.
Corruption had always been an issue in Venezuela,but under Lusinchi it became the main issue,and most Venezuelans considered that corruption,and not sheer incompetence,was the root of all of society's ills. Lusinchi had divorced his wife and married Blanca Ibañez,who was considered very influential behind the scene and was blamed for abuse of power and nepotism. [2] The Venezuelan economy stagnated,and the country at the end of Lusinchi's regime was reportedly bankrupt. It would be reasonable to surmise that this should have been the end of bipolarity in the next elections,but it would be wrong. In the 1988 elections,the two ruling parties got a total of 93% of the vote. Petkoff fared very badly,but abstentions went up to 18%. The winner was none other than Carlos Andrés Pérez,for his second term. (In the Venezuelan constitution you could be re-elected as many times as you wanted as long as it wasn’t in successive elections.) The question was:How could a country whose descent into insolvency began with Pérez,who had botched so badly his first term,when corruption flourished as never before,have re-elected him with a majority that was barely less than the one Lusinchi got? This enigma has various explanations. That pardos were still adecos is an obvious one. The opposition to bipolarity did not have a leader is another. But especially,Venezuelans of all hues simply remembered that during Pérez's first term there had been a lot of money in circulation,things over-all had not been so dismal,and somehow they figured that Pérez could perform the miracle of making Venezuela "prosperous" again.
| Ministries [3] | ||
|---|---|---|
| OFFICE | NAME | TERM |
| President | Jaime Lusinchi | 1984–1989 |
| Homeland Affairs | Octavio Lepage | 1984–1986 |
| JoséÁngel Ciliberto | 1986–1988 | |
| Simón Alberto Consalvi | 1988–1989 | |
| Foreign Affairs | Isidro Morales Paúl | 1984–1985 |
| Simón Alberto Consalvi | 1985–1988 | |
| Germán Nava Carrillo | 1988–1989 | |
| Finance | Manuel Azpúrua Arreaza | 1984–1987 |
| Héctor Hurtado | 1987–1989 | |
| Defense | Humberto Alcalde Álvarez | 1984 |
| Andrés Brito Martínez | 1984–1986 | |
| JoséCardozo Grimaldi | 1986–1987 | |
| Heliodoro Guerrero | 1987–1988 | |
| Italo del Valle Alliegro | 1988–1989 | |
| Development (Public Works) | Héctor Hurtado | 1984–1986 |
| JoséÁngel Ciliberto | 1986 | |
| Gustavo Mirabal Bustillos | 1986–1987 | |
| Héctor Meneses | 1987–1989 | |
| Transportation and Communications | Juan Pedro del Moral | 1984–1988 |
| Vicente Pérez Cayena | 1988–1989 | |
| Education | Ruth Lerner de Almea | 1984–1985 |
| Luis Manuel Carbonell | 1985–1987 | |
| Pedro Cabello Poleo | 1987–1988 | |
| Laura Castillo de Gourfinkel | 1988–1989 | |
| Justice | JoséManzo González | 1984–1988 |
| Pedro Torres Agudo | 1988–1989 | |
| Energy (Mines and Oil) | Arturo Hernández Grisanti | 1984–1988 |
| Julio César Gil | 1988–1989 | |
| Environment | Orlando Castejón | 1984 |
| Juan Francisco Otaola Paván | 1984–1986 | |
| Guillermo Colmenares Finol | 1986–1989 | |
| JoséArnaldo PuigbóMotales | 1988–1989 | |
| Agriculture | Felipe Gómez Álvarez | 1984–1988 |
| Wenceslao Mantilla | 1988–1989 | |
| Labor | Simón Antonio Paván | 1984–1988 |
| JoséArnaldo PuigbóMorales | 1988–1989 | |
| Health and Social Assistance | Luis Maniel Manzanilla | 1984–1985 |
| Otto Hernández Pieretti | 1985–1987 | |
| Francisco Montbrum | 1987–1989 | |
| Urban Development | Rafael Martín Guédez | 1984–1986 |
| César Quintana Romero | 1986–1989 | |
| Youth | Milena Sardi de Selle | 1984–1987 |
| Virginia Olivo de Celli | 1987–1989 | |
| Secretary of Presidency | Simón Alberto Consalvi | 1984–1985 |
| Carmelo Lauría Lesseur | 1985–1988 | |
| Carlos Croes | 1988–1989 | |
| Office for Coordination and Planification | Luis Raúl Matos Azócar | 1984–1986 |
| Leopoldo Carnevali | 1986–1988 | |
| Modesto Freites | 1988–1989 | |
| CVG | Leopoldo Sucre Figarella | 1984–1989 |
Jaime Ramón Lusinchi was the president of Venezuela from 1984 to 1989. His term was characterized by an economic crisis,growth of the external debt,populist policies,currency depreciation,inflation and corruption that exacerbated the crisis of the political system established in 1958.
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 165 members (diputados),elected for five-year terms using a mixed-member majoritarian representation system. Elections also take place at state level and local level.
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.
The Movement for Socialism is a democratic socialist political party in Venezuela.
Teodoro Petkoff Malec was a Venezuelan politician,economist and journalist. One of Venezuela's most prominent politicians on the left,Petkoff began as a communist but founded the democratic socialist Movement Toward Socialism party after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Petkoff was elected as senator and ran for the presidency twice in the 1980s,being defeated both times. As Minister of Planning,he oversaw President Rafael Caldera's adoption of liberalization economic policies in the mid-1990s. He was a prominent critic of President Hugo Chávez and was a candidate to run against him in the 2006 presidential election until he dropped out four months before the vote to support Manuel Rosales. Petkoff launched the newspaper Tal Cual in 2000 and remained its editor until his death in 2018.
The Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela was Venezuela's highest court until the 1999 Constitution of Venezuela replaced it with the Supreme Tribunal of Justice.
The Republic of Venezuela was a democratic republic first established in 1953,and replaced in 1999 by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Venezuela saw ten years of military dictatorship from 1948 to 1958. After the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état brought an end to a three-year experiment in democracy,a triumvirate of military personnel controlled the government until 1952,when it held presidential elections. These were free enough to produce results unacceptable to the government,leading them to be falsified and to one of the three leaders,Marcos Pérez Jiménez,assuming the Presidency. His government was brought to an end by the 1958 Venezuelan coup d'état,which saw the advent of democracy with a transitional government under Admiral Wolfgang Larrazábal in place until the December 1958 elections. Prior to the elections,three of the main political parties,Acción Democrática,COPEI and Unión Republicana Democrática,with the notable exclusion of the Communist Party of Venezuela,signed up to the Puntofijo Pact power-sharing agreement.
The history of Venezuela reflects events in areas of the Americas colonized by Spain starting 1502;amid resistance from indigenous peoples,led by Native caciques,such as Guaicaipuro and Tamanaco. However,in the Andean region of western Venezuela,complex Andean civilization of the Timoto-Cuica people flourished before European contact.
The Democratic Republican Union is a Venezuelan political party founded in 1945.
The Senate of Venezuela was the upper house of Venezuela's legislature under its 1961 constitution. Under the 1999 constitution,the bicameral system was replaced by the unicameral National Assembly of Venezuela. However,since 1999 the former chamber of senators has been used by the National Assembly for solemn meetings and other special functions.
The Revolutionary Left Movement was a left-wing Marxist political party in Venezuela. It split from Acción Democrática in 1960 and became involved in armed guerrilla struggle against the Venezuelan state.
The first presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez coincided with the oil boom of 1974,which saw Venezuela's economy prosper. Carlos Andrés Pérez launched a program of rapid modernization. His first presidency also saw the nationalization of the oil industry. He regained the presidency in 1988.
The first presidency of Rafael Caldera took place from 1969 to 1974. He was elected by only 33,000 votes. He was sworn in as president in March 1969—the first time in the country's 139-year history that an incumbent government peacefully surrendered power to the opposition.
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El Trienio Adeco was a three-year period in Venezuelan history,from 1945 to 1948,under the government of the popular party Democratic Action. The party gained office via the 1945 Venezuelan coup d'état against President Isaías Medina Angarita,and held the first democratic elections in Venezuelan history,beginning with the 1946 Venezuelan Constituent Assembly election. The 1947 Venezuelan general election saw Democratic Action formally elected to office,but it was removed from office shortly after in the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état.
A military dictatorship ruled Venezuela for ten years,from 1948 to 1958. After the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état brought an end a three-year experiment in democracy,a triumvirate of military personnel controlled the government until 1952,when it held presidential elections. These were free enough to produce results unacceptable to the government,leading them to be falsified,and to one of the three leaders,Marcos Pérez Jiménez,assuming the Presidency. His government was brought to an end by the 1958 Venezuelan coup d'état which saw the advent of democracy,with a transition government under Admiral Wolfgang Larrazábal in place until the December 1958 elections. Prior to the elections,three of the main political parties signed up to the Punto Fijo Pact power-transition agreement.
Luis Herrera Campins served as President of Venezuela from 1979 to 1984. Prior to his election,he founded the moderately conservative Christian COPEI party. He was succeeded by Jaime Lusinchi.
JoséAgustín CataláDelgado was a Venezuelan journalist and author.
Blanca Alida Ibáñez Piña is a Venezuelan private secretary and widow of former President Jaime Lusinchi. She is the daughter of María del Rosario Piña and Carlos Julio Ibáñez.
Gladys Teresa Castillo Cardier de Lusinchi was a Venezuelan pediatrician and social activist. She was the First Lady of Venezuela from 1984 until her divorce from President Jaime Lusinchi in 1988. Lusinchi's controversial divorce from First Lady Castillo,in favor of his mistress and private secretary Blanca Ibáñez,was a major public and political scandal during his presidency.
President of Venezuela (1984–1989) | ||
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