Word: democr
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...program of social and economic reform. This week, as Venezuela's first president in 134 years to complete his term, Betancourt will turn over the red, blue and yellow sash of office to a freely elected successor: Raul Leoni, 57, a member of his own Acción Democrática Party. Yet Leoni has lost his first political battle before he even begins, and Venezuela seems headed for trouble...
Betancourt learned his lesson when he first came to power in 1945, as provisional President after a coup by junior officers. He tried to ram through drastic economic and social reforms, but his successor paid too little attention to the military. Within three years, his Action Democrática party was turned out by another coup that led to the brutal, ten-year rule of Dictator Marcos Pérez Jimènez, a general. His next chance at office, Betancourt went all out to convince the small (33,000 men) but powerful armed forces that they had nothing...
...past five years, Venezuela's strong-willed President Romulo Betancourt has held his volatile nation together mainly through the force of his bulldog personality. But Betancourt is constitutionally barred from succeeding himself when his term ends next December. What then? Last week Betancourt's Acción Democrática, the country's biggest party, nominated a candidate to carry on. He is Rául Leoni, 57, the party president, an old crony of Betancourt's and, like him, a onetime revolutionary turned democratic reformer...
...second chance. Above all, he is a master politician who has learned about his country and its people by tramping dusty back-lands roads and sleeping in peasant huts. He organized peasants, industrial workers, students, businessmen and professional men into a leftist movement called Actión Democrática (A.D.), the country's major political party...
...243pez allowed him to return to witness the elaborately rigged election of another general, Isaias Medina Angarita. President Medina, determined to act democratic, surprisingly allowed Betancourt to launch Actión Democrâtica and develop it over the next four years into a major political force...