Current Political Conditions
The Rise to Power of Hugo Chávez
With his election as President in December 1998, Hugo Chávez began to transform Venezuela’s political system. The watershed election, in which former coup leader Chávez received 56 percent of the vote (16 percent more than his closest rival), illustrated Venezuelans’ rejection of the country’s two traditional parties, Democratic Action (AD) and the Social Christian Party (COPEI), that had dominated Venezuelan politics for much of the past 40 years. Elected to a five-year term, Chávez was the candidate of the Patriotic Pole, a left-leaning coalition of 15 parties, with Chávez’s own Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) the main party in the coalition….
