Acción Democrática

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Acción Democrática
Acción Democrática.svg
Secretary General Henry Ramos Allup
founding September 13, 1941
Headquarters Calle los Cedros, edificio Rómulo Betancourt. La Florida, Caracas
Youth organization Juventud Acción Democrática (JAD)
Alignment social democratic
Colours) White
International connections Socialist International
Website www.acciondemocratica.org.ve

The Acción Democrática (abbreviation: AD ; German  Democratic Action ) is a social democratic party in Venezuela . It was the largest party in the country until the 1990s and has eight presidents. Since then, it has lost its importance and is in the opposition.

The founder of the party was Rómulo Betancourt .

history

The AD was founded shortly after the Communist Party in 1941 , but was the first and only People's Party in Venezuela from the 1940s. Unlike previous parties, which were more elitist elite associations, it had a mass base. During the democratic phase of the so-called trienios from 1945 to 1948, the party dominated all elections. The 1947 presidential election was won by her candidate Rómulo Gallegos with 74%. The party represented a democratic and anti-imperialist nationalism and populism , comparable to the APRA in Peru and the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) in Bolivia. Like them, it endeavored to unite workers, middle classes, peasants and nationally-oriented entrepreneurs. In doing so, it was directed against the traditional landowning elite and the influence of foreign capital on the one hand, and against the communist class struggle on the other.

During the dictatorship of Marco Pérez Jiménez from 1948 to 1958, the AD was banned as the strongest opposition party and many members fought underground against the dictator. Closed after his overthrow in 1958 AD peak with the two other pro-democracy parties, the progressive-liberal Unión Republicana Democrática (URD) and the Christian Democratic COPEI the Punto Fijo-Agreement . They wanted to avoid a concentration of power as in the trienio , guarantee a stable democracy and economic development and keep the communists away from power. While the influence of the URD quickly declined, the AD and COPEI became the dominant parties in the country and a de facto two-party system for the following decades . The leader of the AD, Rómulo Betancourt , won the first presidential election after the end of the dictatorship. In the thirty years that followed, AD candidates won five out of seven presidential elections.

In 1960 the young left wing split off and founded the short-lived Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR; German "Left Revolutionary Movement"), which soon operated underground with the communists. On the occasion of the 1963 elections, the party suffered another split: while Betancourt's supporters ran as AD-Gobierno , his internal-party opponents ran as AD-Oposición . The government wing clearly won the election, while the dissenters failed. The official AD candidate Raúl Leoni became the new president. Shortly before the presidential elections, the then AD President Prieto Figueroa split off in 1967 and founded the Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo (MEP) with the left wing . In 1968 the AD received 26% and the MEP 13% of the vote. This is how Rafael Caldera from the Christian Democratic COPEI could become President. The AD became an observer in 1966, an associate in 1981 and soon afterwards a full member of the Socialist International .

In the course of the 1990s, the two established parties AD and COPEI lost their influence. In 1989 the AD won the presidential elections in Venezuela for the last time with Carlos Andrés Pérez . Manuel Rosales , a former AD politician and founder of the center-left Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT) party, was a common candidate for the opposition parties in 2006, but was clearly defeated by President Hugo Chávez . Since 2008 the AD has been part of the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) opposition alliance against the governments of Chávez and Nicolás Maduro . In the legislative period from 2010 to 2015, it was the strongest opposition faction in the National Assembly with 19 seats , but far behind the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV). She supported Henrique Capriles Radonski's candidacy in the 2012 and 2013 presidential elections.

In the 2015 parliamentary election , which ended with a landslide victory for the MUD, the AD received 25 seats in the National Assembly. This makes it the second strongest force in the opposition bloc, which now has a parliamentary majority. AD politician Henry Ramos Allup was elected President of the National Assembly. In January 2017, however, he was replaced by Julio Borges ( Primero Justicia ).

After the opposition parties decided not to take part in the parliamentary elections in Venezuela in 2020 because it would not be held as a free election, the Venezuelan Supreme Court loyal to the regime dismissed the party's executive board and set up a pro-government executive.

See also

literature

In order of appearance.

  • John D. Martz: Acción Democrática. Evolution of a modern political party in Venezuela . Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1966.
  • Manuel Vicente Magallanes: Cuatro partidos nacionales: Acción Democrática, COPEI, Partido Comunista de Venezuela, Unión Republicana Democrática . Diana, Caracas 1973.
  • Santiago Maggi Cook: Formación democrática en América Latina. La contribución venezolana de Acción Democrática y COPEI . In: Nueva Sociedad , Vol. 7 (1978), No. 34, pp. 40-55.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Scott Mainwaring, Ana María Bejarano, Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez: An Overview. In: The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes. Stanford University Press, Stanford CA 2006, p. 20.
  2. ^ George Philip: Institutions and democratic consolidation in Latin America. In: Developments in Latin American Political Economy. States, Markets and Actors. Manchester University Press, Manchester 1999, p. 57.
  3. ↑ Integración de la Asamblea Nacional por partido político. ( Memento of the original from July 31, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.eluniversal.com archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: El Universal (Online), December 10, 2015.
  4. ^ Supreme Court replaces opposition party board; in: SPON from July 8, 2020, online