President Nicolás Maduro Founder Hugo Chávez | Vice President Diosdado Cabello Headquarters Mariperez, Caracas | |
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Founded March 24, 2007; 10 years ago (2007-03-24) Preceded by Fifth Republic Movement | ||
The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Spanish: Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, PSUV) is a socialist political party in Venezuela which resulted from the fusion of some of the political and social forces that support the Bolivarian Revolution led by the late President Hugo Chávez. It has approximately 5.7 million members as of 2007. PSUV held primary elections on 2 May 2010 for candidates to the National Assembly election in September, with 2,568,090 members voting.
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At the 2015 parliamentary election, PSUV lost its majority in the National Assembly for the first time since the unicameral legislature's creation in 2000 against the Democratic Unity Roundtable, earning 55 out of the National Assembly's 167 seats.
History
The process of merging most of the unidentified parties involved in the pro-Bolivarian Revolution coalition was initiated by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez after he won the Venezuelan presidential election of 2006. The process was led by Chávez' own party, the Fifth Republic Movement, and was supported by a range of smaller parties such as the People's Electoral Movement (MEP), Venezuelan Popular Unity (UPV), the Tupamaro Movement, the Socialist League and others which all together added up 45.99% of the votes received by Chávez during the 2006 election. Other pro-Bolivarian parties like the Communist Party of Venezuela (Partido Comunista de Venezuela, PCV), Fatherland for All (Patria Para Todos, PPT) and For Social Democracy (PODEMOS), that cast 14.60% of the votes from that election, declined to join the new party.
On 7 March 2007, Chávez presented a phased plan for founding the new party until November 2007. PODEMOS, PPT and PCV initially stated they would wait until PSUV had been founded and decide their membership in the new party based on its program. On 18 March 2007, Chávez declared on his programme Aló Presidente that he had "opened the doors for Podemos, Patria Para Todos, and the Communist Party of Venezuela if they want to go away from Chávez´s alliance, they may do so and leave us in peace". In his opinion, those parties were near to be on the opposition and they should choose wisely, between going "in silence, hugging us or throwing stones". PPT, at its 2007 congress on April 10 and 11, decided not to join but re-affirmed its support for Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution.
The party held its founding congress in early 2008, from 12 January to 2 March, with 1681 delegates participating. Chávez was proclaimed President of the new party on 14 March.
As of 2014, the party has been described as "fracturing" and "weakening" due to the loss of Hugo Chávez, the poor state of Venezuela's economy and falling oil prices. Internal issues also appeared in the party, with an email address and telephone hotline created to report "internal enemies". In 23 November PSUV elections, it was reported by party dissidents that very few individuals participated, with less than 10% of the supposedly 7.6 million members casting a vote.
Overview
Chávez said that "It's a very young party" with an average age of 35 among members. Analysts agreed, saying: "The assumption is that the younger people are going to be Chavistas [in support of Chávez], they are going to be the ones whose families have benefited from Chávez's social programs."
With the creation of PSUV, relationships greatly soured with former coalition parties that chose not to join. By the 2008 regional election campaign in October, Chávez declared that "Patria Para Todos and the Communist Party of Venezuela will disappear from the political map because they are liars and manipulators."
In April 2010, an Extraordinary Congress of the PSUV resulted in the endorsement of a range of "general principles", including among others socialism, Marxism, and Bolivarianism; humanism, internationalism, and patriotism; and the defense of participatory democracy and use of internal party democracy. It also defined the party as the "political vanguard of the revolutionary process".
The party held its 3rd Congress in 2014, which elected Nicolás Maduro as the 2nd party president and honored Hugo Chávez posthumously as the party's eternal president and founder, and party policies were updated.
Party Congress
The party is headed at the national level by the eternal President Hugo Chávez (a posthumous title), the president (currently Nicolas Maduro), vice-president (Jorge Arreaza), and a 29-member national board of directors:
Units of Battle Hugo Chávez (UBCh)
The Units of Battle Hugo Chávez (UBCh) is a collection of organizations with multiple members of PSUV involved that has both military and political characteristics. The UBCh originated as a group to defend the Bolivarian Revolution and support the party through electoral processes in Venezuela, and were transformed into their current name in 2013. They form the basic party unit in Venezuelan communities, and 4 or more of them form a People's Struggle Circle ( Círculo de Lucha Popular) in the community level. The Unit itself is divided into 10 Unit Patrols serving various functions for party members in various sectors.
Other assisting groups include: