Chávez: Unfulfilled Promises

Maritza Ramírez de Agena
New York, July 26, 2003


Article 182 of the “Organic Law of suffrage”, describes the legal requirements for a recall referendum in Venezuela. The purpose of this document is to provide you with a detailed review of the political and economic realities of Venezuela under President Hugo Chávez’s rule to summarize a series of arguments that could be used to comply with the second requirement of article 182, which states the need to explain briefly the reasons to request a recall referendum.

Chávez was elected democratically in December 1998 with 3,673,685 votes out of a total of 11,013,020 voters registered in the Venezuelan National Electoral Council.
During the 2002 presidential elections, support for Chávez dipped one percentile point, while the abstention share increased by five percentile points.
Chávez’s ascension to power was possible due to two main factors: discontentment of a majority of Venezuelans with the poor performance of the two traditional political parties for the last 40 years; and to Chávez’s presidential campaign which promised to improve the conditions of the poor, develop policies that would encourage economic growth, reform the branches of the government to ensure justice and efficiency and his most ambitious project, to create a governmental structure to fight against corruption. The following is a summary of Chávez’s performance on the issues he promised to address during his administration.

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