Venezuelan Presidential Election of 1998
Hugo Chavez won 56 percent, sweeping away the old two-party order.
Overview
Amid collapse after the 1989 Caracazo riots, banking crises, and entrenched corruption, former paratrooper Hugo Chavez, jailed after a 1992 coup attempt, won the December 6, 1998 election with 56.2 percent over Yale-educated Henrique Salas Romer, consigning the Punto Fijo AD-COPEI duopoly that had ruled since 1958 to near-extinction. Chavez's constituent assembly rewrote the constitution in 1999, founding the Bolivarian republic. The election began two decades of polarized politics, oil-financed social programs, and successive contested elections that outlasted his 2013 death.
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