The politics of Venezuela occurs in a framework explained in Government of Venezuela.
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 Communist Party of Chile is a communist party in Chile. It was founded in 1912 as the Socialist Workers' Party and adopted its current name in 1922. The party established a youth wing, the Communist Youth of Chile, in 1932.
COPEI, also referred to as the Social Christian Party or Green Party, is a Christian democratic party in Venezuela. The acronym stands for Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente, but this provisional full name has fallen out of use. The party was influential during the twentieth century as a signatory of the Puntofijo Pact and influenced many politicians throughout Latin America at its peak.
Edgar Sanabria Arcia was a Venezuelan lawyer, diplomat, and politician. He served as the acting president of Venezuela from 1958 to 1959.
The Puntofijo Pact was a formal arrangement arrived at between representatives of Venezuela's three main political parties in 1958, Acción Democrática (AD), COPEI, and Unión Republicana Democrática (URD), for the acceptance of the 1958 presidential elections and the preservation of the new democratic system. The pact was a written guarantee that the signing parties would respect the election results, prevent single-party hegemony, share power, and collaborate to prevent dictatorship.
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 People's Electoral Movement is a left-wing political party in Venezuela, founded in 1967 by Luis Beltrán Prieto Figueroa.
Douglas Ignacio Bravo Mora was a Venezuelan politician and guerrilla fighter.
The Armed Forces of National Liberation was a Venezuelan guerrilla group formed by the Communist Party of Venezuela to foment revolution against the democratically elected governments of Rómulo Betancourt and Raul Leoni.
The United Socialist Party of Venezuela is a left-wing to far-left socialist political party which has been the ruling party of Venezuela since 2010. It was formed from a merger of some of the political and social forces that support the Bolivarian Revolution led by President Hugo Chávez.
The Republic of Venezuela was a democratic republic first established in 1958, 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 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.
Juan José Rendón Delgado, known professionally as J. J. Rendón, is a Venezuelan political consultant, psychologist, and political activist with a 35-year career, known for being the one who has directed and won the most electoral campaigns. He specializes in crisis resolution and is a human rights activist. He is a political asylee in the United States.
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.
Rafael Segundo Guerra Ramos is a Venezuelan politician who served as a member of the country's parliament from 1973 to 1993. He was a leader of Venezuela's Partido Comunista de Venezuela, PCV and a founding member of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), but withdrew from the MAS in 1998 after the party's leadership backed the candidacy of Hugo Chávez, for the presidency. Since 1999 he has been outspoken in his opposition to the governments of Chávez and Nicolás Maduro and has served as president and vice president of the Association of Retired Members of Parliament and the Social Welfare Institute for Members of Parliament.
The Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat (Communist) (Spanish: Partido Revolucionario del Proletariado (Comunista), abbreviated P.R.P.(C)), nick-named 'the Black Communists', was a political party in Venezuela 1947-1952.
The Popular Revolutionary Alternative is a Venezuelan Chavista political coalition made up of socialist and leftist parties critical of the administration of Nicolás Maduro.
