Democratic Action (Venezuela)
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Democratic Action
Acción Democrática |
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|---|---|
 |
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| President | Isabel Carmona de Serra |
| Vice President | Edgar Zambrano |
| General secretary | Henry Ramos Allup |
| Founder | Romulo Betancourt |
| Founded | 13 September 1941 |
| Headquarters | La Florida, Caracas, Venezuela |
| Ideology | Venezuelan nationalism, Social democracy, Third Way |
| Political position |
Centre to Centre-left |
| National affiliation | Democratic Unity Roundtable |
| International affiliation | Socialist International |
| Regional affiliation | COPPPAL |
| Colors | White (official) |
| Seats in the National Assembly |
26 / 167
|
| Governors |
0 / 23
|
| Mayors |
17 / 337
|
| Website | |
| www |
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Democratic Action (Spanish: Acción Democrática, abbreviated as AD) is a Venezuelan centrist political party established in 1941.
The party and its antecedents played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy, and led the government during Venezuela's first democratic period (1945–1948). After an intervening decade of dictatorship (1948–1958) saw AD excluded from power, four presidents came from Acción Democrática from the 1960s to the 1990s. By the end of the 1990s, however, the party's credibility was almost nonexistent, mostly because of the corruption and poverty that Venezuelans experienced during the last two full-term administrations of the party's time in power, namely, those of Jaime Lusinchi (1984–1989) and Carlos Andrés Pérez (1989–1993). The latter president was impeached for corruption in 1993, and spent several years in prison as a result. Since the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, a range of newer parties (such as A New Era and Justice First) have been more prominent in opposition to Chávez. In the 2015 legislative elections held on 6 December, AD backed the opposition electoral alliance Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) which managed to grasp a supermajority. AD won 26 constituency representatives out of 167 seats in the unicameral National Assembly: It is the second largest opposition party after Justice First. AD General Secretary Henry Ramos Allup is the current President of the National Assembly.
The party and its antecedents played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy. The Agrupación Revolucionaria de Izquierda (ARDI) was founded in 1931 in Colombia by Rómulo Betancourt 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 legalized all political parties, Acción Democrática was founded by Betancourt and others. These included Rómulo Gallegos, Andrés Eloy Blanco, Luis Beltrán Prieto, Juan Oropeza, Luis Lander, Raúl Ramos, Medardo Medina, Enrique H. Marín, Rafael Padrón, Fernando Peñalver, Luis Augusto Dubuc, César Hernández, José V. Hernández and Ricardo Montilla. Gallegos was a highly prestigious writer, the author of the iconic novel, Doña Bárbara (1929), among several others, while Andrés Eloy Blanco was a celebrated Venezuelan poet and a witty humoristic writer.
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