Secretary-General Jesús "Chúo" Torrealba Ideology Anti-Chavism
Big tent Seats in the National Assembly 112 / 167 | Founded 23 January 2008 Political position Centre | |
Colors (Venezuelan national colors)
Blue primarily | ||
The Democratic Unity Roundtable (Spanish: Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, MUD) is a catch-all electoral coalition of Venezuelan political parties formed in January 2008 to unify the opposition to President Hugo Chávez's United Socialist Party of Venezuela in the Venezuelan parliamentary election, 2010. A previous opposition umbrella group, the Coordinadora Democrática, had collapsed after the failure of the Venezuelan recall referendum, 2004.
Contents
- Overview
- 2010 legislative elections
- 2012 presidential election
- 2015 legislative elections
- Former member parties
- References
The coalition includes centrist, centre-left, left-wing and centre-right parties. The main components are Democratic Action and Copei, the two parties who dominated Venezuelan politics from 1959 to 1999.
In the 2015 parliamentary election, the coalition became the largest group in the National Assembly with 112 out of 167 (a supermajority), ending sixteen years of PSUV rule of the country's unicameral parliament.
Overview
The MUD was formally launched on 23 January 2008 and restructured on 8 June 2009. In June 2009 MUD included 11 political parties, and was led by Luis Ignacio Planas, President of Copei. By April 2010 the MUD included around 50 political parties, of which 16 were national in scope (the rest regional), and had support from some other social organisations and opinion groups. The main parties included in MUD are Democratic Action and Copei, the two parties who dominated Venezuelan politics from 1959 to 1999; the dissenting left-wing parties Movement for Socialism, Radical Cause and Red Flag Party; and more recently established parties Project Venezuela, A New Era, Justice First and For Social Democracy ("PODEMOS").
The MUD is supported by the Movimiento 2D opposition movement led by El Nacional editor and proprietor Miguel Henrique Otero.
Ramón Guillermo Aveledo served as the MUD's Executive Secretary from March 2009 to July 2014.
The journalist Jesús "Chúo" Torrealba became the coalition's current Executive Secretary in September 2014.
The coalition struggled to find a clear message in its early days, but has settled on a platform focused on human rights, democracy, and political pluralism. As a coalition of varying ideologies, MUD now rarely makes statements on social or economic policy, although it has supported the 2014–15 Venezuelan protests against supply shortages. MUD still occasionally faces internal divisions.
2010 legislative elections
In April 2010 the MUD held primaries in 15 electoral districts, with 361,000 voters participating, and selecting 22 candidates (the remaining 143 candidates were chosen "by consensus"). The candidates chosen included María Corina Machado (of Súmate) and Iván Simonovis, one of nine police officials allegedly serving time for participating in the alleged 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt. Several others of the nine, regarded by the MUD as political prisoners, were also nominated, in districts with a real chance of opposition success; winning would require their release because of parliamentary immunity. Manuel Rosales, the opposition's candidate in the Venezuelan presidential election, 2006 and now in exile in Peru due to corruption charges (which Rosales denies), was also nominated.
In the September 2010 election for the National Assembly of Venezuela the MUD won around 47% of the vote nationally; however, it only gained 64 seats (out of 165) due to changes in population-vote distribution introduced by the incumbent national assembly that had a government party supermajority. In the same elections, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela won 48% of the vote and 98 seats, while the Patria Para Todos (PPT) party got only 2 seats. Notable new deputies included María Corina Machado and Enrique Mendoza.
2012 presidential election
The MUD held an open primary election on 12 February 2012. Henrique Capriles Radonski won the opposition primaries with 1,900,528 (64.2%) votes of the 3,059,024 votes cast (votes abroad not included). The other candidates on the 12 February 2012 primary ballot were:
2015 legislative elections
In December 2015, MUD won 112 of the 167 seats in the National Assembly to give it a 2/3 supermajority.
Former member parties
The Christian Democratic Copei party was not a member of the coalition in the 2015 parliamentary election, despite having been a founding member of the MUD.
The Communist Red Flag Party was a member of the coalition and support the opposition Henrique Capriles Radonski in the 2012 presidential election, due to different objectives, the Red Flag Party stepped out of the MUD.