Democratic Action (, AD) is a

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

social democratic Social democracy is a Social philosophy, social, Economic ideology, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achi ...

and

centre-left Centre-left politics is the range of left-wing political ideologies that lean closer to the political centre. Ideologies commonly associated with it include social democracy, social liberalism, progressivism, and green politics. Ideas commo ...

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...

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. Since 2000, the party's general secretary has been

Henry Ramos Allup Henry Lisandro Ramos Allup (born 17 October 1943) is a Venezuelan politician and lawyer and former President of the National Assembly who was born in Valencia, Carabobo, Valencia, Carabobo. He has been leader of the social democracy, social democ ...

. In the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary election, AD backed the opposition electoral alliance Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) which managed to grasp a

supermajority A supermajority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority rules in a democracy can help to prevent a majority from eroding fun ...

. AD won 26 constituency representatives out of 167 seats in the unicameral

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...

, making it the second-largest party in opposition to

Nicolás Maduro Nicolás Maduro Moros (; born 23 November 1962) is a Venezuelan politician and former union leader serving as the 53rd president of Venezuela since 2013. Previously, he was the 24th Vice President of Venezuela, vice president from 2012 to 20 ...

. In July 2018, AD left the Democratic Unity Roundtable opposition coalition.

History

Early years: 1931–1958

The party had a chaotic early history. The ''Agrupación Revolucionaria de Izquierda'' (ARDI) was founded in 1931 in Colombia by

Rómulo Betancourt Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello (22 February 1908 – 28 September 1981; ), known as "The Father of Venezuelan Democracy", was a Venezuelan politician who served as the president of Venezuela, from and again from Second presidency of Rómulo ...

and other exile Venezuelans. In 1936 this became the ''Movimiento de Organización Venezolana'' (ORVE), which was then dissolved into the ''Partido Democrático Nacional'' (PDN). Finally, in 1941, after

Isaías Medina Angarita Isaías Medina Angarita (6 July 1897 – 15 September 1953) was a Venezuelan military and politician who served as President of Venezuela from 1941 until 1945, during World War II. He followed the path of his predecessor Eleazar López Contre ...

legalized all political parties in Venezuela, Acción Democrática was founded by Betancourt and others. These included

Rómulo Gallegos Rómulo Ángel del Monte Carmelo Gallegos Freire (2 August 1884 – 5 April 1969) was a Venezuelan novelist and politician. In 1948, he became the first freely elected President of Venezuela, president in Venezuela's history. He was removed from ...

Andrés Eloy Blanco Andrés Eloy Blanco Meaño (6 August 1896 – 21 May 1955) was a noted Venezuelan poet and politician. He was a member of the ''Generación del 28'', and one of the founders of Acción Democrática (AD). He was Minister of Foreign Affairs (Ve ...

, Luis Beltrán Prieto, Juan Oropeza, Luis Lander, Raúl Ramos Jiménez, Medardo Medina Febres, Enrique H. Marín, Rafael Padrón, Fernando Peñalver, Luis Augusto Dubuc, César Hernández, José V. Hernández and Ricardo Montilla. Gallegos was a highly prestigious writer, author of the iconic novel, '' Doña Bárbara'' (1929), while Eloy Blanco was a celebrated Venezuelan poet and witty

humorist A humorist is an intellectual who uses humor, or wit, in writing or public speaking. A raconteur is one who tells anecdotes in a skillful and amusing way. Henri Bergson writes that a humorist's work grows from viewing the morals of society ...

. After the October 1945 revolution, Betancourt was

President of Venezuela The president of Venezuela (), officially known as the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (), is the executive head of state and head of government of Venezuela. The president leads the National Executive of the Venezuelan go ...

until

won the 1947 election, generally believed to be the first free and fair elections in Venezuelan history. The party won a vast majority of seats in the municipal elections the following year. Gallegos governed until being overthrown in 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 ...

. The 1945–48 period is known as the '' trienio''. Many of AD's founders and early members went into exile during the subsequent dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and returned for the restoration of democracy in 1958.

Political dominance: 1958–1999

After the restoration of democracy, AD joined the 1958

Puntofijo Pact The Puntofijo Pact was a formal arrangement arrived at between representatives of Venezuela's three main political parties in 1958, Acción Democrática (AD), COPEI (Social Christian Party), and Unión Republicana Democrática (URD), for the ...

, initiating a forty-year period of two-party dominance by AD and COPEI. Betancourt won the 1958 election, and Raúl Leoni won the following 1963 elections. AD also won in 1973 (

Carlos Andrés Pérez Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez (27 October 1922 – 25 December 2010) also known as CAP and often referred to as ''Venezuelan Spanish#Some examples of Spanish words common in Venezuela.2C including some native Venezuelanisms .28slang.29, El ...

1983 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning of the ...

(

Jaime Lusinchi Jaime Ramón Lusinchi (27 May 1924 – 21 May 2014) was the president of Venezuela from 1984 to 1989. His term was characterized by an economic crisis, growth of the external debt, populist policies, currency depreciation, inflation and corrupt ...

), and 1988 (Carlos Andrés Pérez again). From 1958 to 1999, AD's candidates only lost four out of nine presidential elections (two to COPEI, in 1968 and

1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd ...

, two to third-party candidates in

1993 The United Nations General Assembly, General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as: * International Year for the World's Indigenous People The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its ...

and

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...

), and one of those occurred during a major split in AD.

Splits

The 1968 presidential election was shaped by the internal split of Democratic Action, with a substantial leftist faction breaking away to form the

Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo The People's Electoral Movement (''Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo'', MEP) is a left-wing political party in Venezuela, founded in 1967 by Luis Beltrán Prieto Figueroa. The MEP was founded after Prieto Figueroa won the 1967 Acción Democráti ...

(MEP). The split was the result of Luis Beltrán Prieto Figueroa's victory in the 1967 AD

primary election Primary elections or primaries are elections held to determine which candidates will run in an upcoming general election. In a partisan primary, a political party selects a candidate. Depending on the state and/or party, there may be an "open pr ...

, only to see his nomination overturned by the party's

reformist Reformism is a political tendency advocating the reform of an existing system or institution – often a political or religious establishment – as opposed to its abolition and replacement via revolution. Within the socialist movement, ref ...

social democrat Social democracy is a Social philosophy, social, Economic ideology, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achi ...

faction (led by Betancourt) in favor of Gonzalo Barrios, with the Betancourt faction considering Prieto too far left.David L. Swanson, Paolo Mancini (1996), ''Politics, media, and modern democracy: an international study of innovations in electoral campaigning and their consequences'', Greenwood Publishing Group. p244 Prieto Figueroa, at the time President of the

Venezuelan Senate The Senate of Venezuela was the upper house of Venezuela's legislature under its 1961 constitution. Under the 1999 constitution, the bicameral system was replaced by the unicameral National Assembly of Venezuela. However, since 1999 the former cha ...

as well as President of AD, split from AD over the affair along with a substantial number of his supporters. The result was that the 1968 election marked AD's first-ever electoral loss, when COPEI's

Rafael Caldera Rafael Antonio Caldera Rodríguez ( ; 24 January 1916 – 24 December 2009) was a Venezuelan politician and academician who was the 46th and 51st president of Venezuela from 1969 to 1974 and again from 1994 to 1999, thus becoming the longest se ...

won the Presidency with less than 30% of the vote, just ahead of AD's Barrios. Prieto Figueroa attained nearly 20%, attaining fourth place behind the

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

's Miguel Ángel Burelli Rivas. An earlier split, in 1960, saw the Revolutionary Left Movement break away from AD. Its subsequent engagement in armed struggle against the government meant the split posed less of a partisan problem compared the later MEP split.

Chávez/Maduro era: 1999–present

The Puntofijo Pact and AD- COPEI duopoly over Venezuelan politics collapsed in the early 1990s in the face of a severe economic and political crisis, culminating in the impeachment of AD member and

for corruption and the 1993 election of former COPEI leader

on a National Convergence coalition platform. Caldera's failure to resolve the economic crisis created the political environment for the 1998 election of

Hugo Chávez Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (; ; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician, Bolivarian Revolution, revolutionary, and Officer (armed forces), military officer who served as the 52nd president of Venezuela from 1999 until De ...

. In the 2000 elections for the new

National Assembly of Venezuela The National Assembly () is the federal legislature of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which was first elected in 2000 under the 1999 constitution. It is a unicameral body made up of a variable number of members, who are elected by a ...

, AD won 29 out of 165 seats; four additional seats were won by an AD-COPEI alliance. At the 2005 legislative elections Democratic Action staged an electoral

boycott A boycott is an act of nonviolent resistance, nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organisation, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for Morality, moral, society, social, politics, political, or Environmenta ...

and consequently did not win any seats. During the 2010 and 2015 elections, AD was part of the Democratic Unity Roundtable. In the

2015 elections Africa * 2015 Beninese parliamentary election 26 April 2015 * 2015 Burkinabé general election 29 November 2015 * 2015 Burundian legislative election 29 June 2015 * 2015 Burundian presidential election 21 July 2015 * 2015-16 Central African gene ...

where the Roundtable won the National Assembly in a 109-seat majority, AD won 25 seats. The Roundtable parties boycotted the 2017 elections to the

Constituent Assembly A constituent assembly (also known as a constitutional convention, constitutional congress, or constitutional assembly) is a body assembled for the purpose of drafting or revising a constitution. Members of a constituent assembly may be elected b ...

and participated in an unofficial referendum against its formation. In July 2018, AD left the Democratic Unity Roundtable, citing "operative problems inside the organization" and difficulties in electing the new secretary general of the coalition. Acción Democrática's

Secretary General Secretary is a title often used in organizations to indicate a person having a certain amount of authority, Power (social and political), power, or importance in the organization. Secretaries announce important events and communicate to the org ...

is Henry Ramos Allup. The

trade union A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

confederation CTV is closely linked to AD. AD is a member of the

Socialist International The Socialist International (SI) is a political international or worldwide organisation of political parties which seek to establish democratic socialism, consisting mostly of Social democracy, social democratic political parties and Labour mov ...

, and a member of

COPPPAL The Permanent Conference of Political Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean (; , COPPPAL) is an international organization of political parties in Latin America and the Caribbean. It was created at the behest of the Institutional Revolutiona ...

Partidos Miembros
, accessed 10 June 2012

Venezuelan Presidents from AD

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1941 establishments in Venezuela Centre-left parties in South America Full member parties of the Socialist International Left-wing nationalist parties Political parties established in 1941 Political parties in Venezuela Social democratic parties in Venezuela Intervened political parties in Venezuela