Constituent Assembly elections were held in

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

on 30 November 1952. Nohlen, D (2005) ''Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume II'', p555 After the elections, it was planned that the Assembly would nominate a provisional president and then draft a new constitution.Samuel Finer, Jay Stanley (2002), ''The man on horseback: the role of the military in politics'',

Transaction Publishers Transaction Publishers was a New Jersey-based publishing house that specialized in social science books and journals. It was located on the Livingston Campus of Rutgers University. Transaction was sold to Taylor & Francis in 2016 and merged wit ...

. pp182-3 Although taking place under military dictatorship, with the main opposition party ( Democratic Action) banned, the election was fair enough to permit early results showing an unexpected defeat for the ruling military junta as the

Democratic Republican Union The Democratic Republican Union ( es, Unión Republicana Democrática, URD) is a Venezuelan political party founded in 1945. History When the party appeared on course to win the 1952 election for a constituent assembly, then-dictator Marcos ...

won 62.8% of the vote.Nohlen, p568 The junta then blocked the final results from being published and installed General

Marcos Pérez Jiménez Marcos Evangelista Pérez Jiménez (25 April 1914 – 20 September 2001) was a Venezuelan military and general officer of the Army of Venezuela and the dictator of Venezuela from 1950 to 1958, ruling as member of the military junta from 19 ...

as provisional President, an outcome confirmed by the Constituent Assembly, which the opposition parties boycotted.

Background

Venezuela had been run by a three-person

junta Junta may refer to: Government and military * Junta (governing body) (from Spanish), the name of various historical and current governments and governing institutions, including civil ones ** Military junta, one form of junta, government led by ...

from the

1948 Venezuelan coup d'état The 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état took place on 24 November 1948, when Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Luis Felipe Llovera Páez overthrew the elected president, Rómulo Gallegos, who had been elected in the 1947 Venezuelan g ...

, under the leadership of

Carlos Delgado Chalbaud Carlos Román Delgado Chalbaud Gómez (20 January 1909 – 13 November 1950) was a Venezuelan career military officer. He was the president of Venezuela from 1948 to 1950 as leader of a military junta. In 1945, he was one of the high-ranking o ...

. His assassination in November 1950 caused delays in the promulgation of the junta's promised electoral law,Leo B. Lott (1957), "The 1952 Venezuelan Elections: A Lesson for 1957", ''The Western Political Quarterly'', Vol. 10, No. 3 (Sep., 1957), pp. 541-558 and afterwards Pérez Jiménez, its most powerful member, opposed the draft law's enfranchisement of all persons over 18, describing it as enfranchising illiterates and minors. Perceived pressure of domestic and international opinion saw the electoral law published in April 1951.

Campaign

The main party of the Venezuelan opposition and of the previous democratic government, Democratic Action, was banned and was specifically prohibited from participating.Robert Jackson Alexander (1982),
Rómulo Betancourt and the transformation of Venezuela
',

. p356 The

Communist Party of Venezuela The Communist Party of Venezuela ( es, Partido Comunista de Venezuela, PCV) is a communist party and the oldest continuously existing party in Venezuela. It was the main leftist political party in Venezuela from its foundation in 1931 until its ...

was also banned.Hollis Micheal Tarver Denova, Julia C. Frederick (2005),
The history of Venezuela
',

Greenwood Publishing Group Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (GPG), also known as ABC-Clio/Greenwood (stylized ABC-CLIO/Greenwood), is an educational and academic publisher (middle school through university level) which is today part of ABC-Clio. Established in 1967 as Gr ...

. p357 In the absence of Democratic Action, the

(URD) was the most powerful opposition party. It seriously considered abstaining but ultimately decided to participate. The opposition URD, led by

Jóvito Villalba Jóvito Villalba Gutiérrez (March 23, 1908 – July 8, 1989), was a Venezuelan lawyer and politician, member of the Generation of 1928, founder of the party URD (''Democratic Republican Union'') and signer of the Puntofijo Pact The Pun ...

, and COPEI, led by

Rafael Caldera Rafael Antonio Caldera Rodríguez ( (); 24 January 1916 – 24 December 2009), twice elected the president of Venezuela, served for two five-year terms (1969–1974 and 1994–1999), becoming the longest serving democratically elected leade ...

, "had to furnish detailed information to the government regarding party-sponsored public meetings, membership rolls, and finances". In addition, press coverage of both parties was censored so strictly that it hardly communicated any more than movements of its leaders, with party policies simply omitted. In the last weeks of the campaign, a parallel organization outside the political parties was organized to support Pérez Jiménez's push for the presidency; it was announced on 5 November that the "National Movement" had collected 1.6 million signatures in support. The movement became so prominent that the President of the Electoral Council reminded the country that it was electing a Constituent assembly, not a President.

Results

Early returns, with around a third of the votes in, showed the URD on 147,065 votes, with the pro-junta FEI trailing with around 50,000 and COPEI finishing third. Pérez Jiménez ordered news coverage halted, and no further figures were announced until he declared final results on 2 December. Democratic Action in exile said that URD and COPEI had together won 1.6 million of 1.8 million votes cast, and 87 seats, and unofficial results published by Armando Veloz Mancera showed 1,198,000 votes for the URD, 403,000 for FEI and 306,000 for COPEI. Some details in state-level results support the charge of fraud. In some states the URD was entitled to one of two seats, based on its share of the official vote, but received none.

Aftermath

After the results were announced the ruling junta resigned and handed power to the military, who named Pérez Jiménez Provisional President. The URD and COPEI boycotted the assembly's first meeting on 3 February. As a result, with only FEI members present, the assembly ratified the election results and formally elected Pérez Jiménez as President of Venezuela. Ultimately, the Assembly drafted a new constitution, which was promulgated in April 1953 and vested the president with sweeping powers to act to protect national security, peace, and order. For all intents and purposes, the document transformed Pérez Jiménez's presidency into a legal dictatorship.

References

{{Venezuelan elections 1952 in Venezuela Elections in Venezuela

Electoral fraud Election and referendum articles with incomplete results