1999 National Constituent Assembly of Venezuela

The Constituent National Assembly or ANC was a constitutional convention held in Venezuela in 1999 to draft a new Constitution of Venezuela, but the assembly also gave itself the role of a supreme power above all the existing institutions in the republic. The Assembly was endorsed by a referendum in April 1999 which enabled Constituent Assembly elections in July 1999. Three seats were reserved for indigenous delegates in the 131-member constitutional assembly, and two additional indigenous delegates won unreserved seats in the assembly elections. The constitution was later endorsed by the referendum in December 1999, and new general elections were held under the new constitution in July 2000. This ended the bipartisanship and ushered in the present-day Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Precedents President Chávez called for a public referendum - something virtually unknown in Venezuela at the time - which he hoped would support his plans to form a constitutional assembly, composed of representatives from across Venezuela, as well as from indigenous tribal groups, which would be able to rewrite the nation's constitution. The referendum went ahead on 25 April 1999, and was an overwhelming success for Chávez, with 88% of voters supporting the proposal. Following this, Chávez called for an election to take place on 25 July 1999, in which the members of the constitutional assembly would be voted into power, and as Bart Jones commented, "The stakes were high. Chávez believed a constitutional assembly controlled by his supporters was the major breakthrough the country needed to end the traditional parties' stronghold on power. Nonetheless, it was not only political supporters of Chávez that believed the assembly was necessarily but also the general public. As a woman in Chávez's home town of Barinas put it on election night, "Democracy is infected. And Chávez is the only antibiotic we have. " The oligarchy, the traditional parties, and much of the media feared it was the final step to establishing a one-man dictatorship."