Politics of Venezuela
The politics of Venezuela, a federal presidential republic, are polarized between supporters of President Nicolás Maduro, organized as the United Socialist Party (PSUV) and the Great Patriotic Pole, and several opposition parties. Opposition parties have boycotted some recent national elections, charging the Maduro government with subverting the independence of the institutions that oversee them and consolidating power with his party.
The PSUV was created in 2007, uniting a number of smaller parties supporting Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution with Chávez's Fifth Republic Movement. PSUV and its forerunners have held the presidency since 1998, and the legislature during most of that time. The Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, MUD), created in 2008, unites much of the opposition (A New Era (UNT), Project Venezuela, Justice First, Movement for Socialism (Venezuela) and others). Hugo Chávez, the central figure of the Venezuelan political landscape since his election to the Presidency in 1998 as a political outsider, died in office in early 2013, and was succeeded by Maduro (initially as interim President, before narrowly winning the 2013 Venezuelan presidential election). According to the V-Dem Democracy indices Venezuela is 2023 the third least electoral democratic country in Latin America.[1][2]
Miscellaneous[edit]
Venezuela abolished the death penalty in 1863, making it the country where this practice has been outlawed the longest.[45][46]
There is a history of tension between church and state in the country. The Catholic Church has accused Chavez of concentrating power in his own hands. In 2009, in the Catholic Church's Easter address to the nation, the bishops said the country's democracy was in "serious danger of collapse."[47]