The election campaign was dominated by the corruption charges brought against sitting President
Carlos Andrés Pérez, which led to his impeachment on 20 May 1993. He was replaced by
Octavio Lepage as Acting President until
Ramón José Velásquez was elected by Congress as interim President on 5 June. An atmosphere of economic and political crisis prevailed, with general economic problems compounded by a banking crisis, and a declining legitimacy of the traditional main parties,
Democratic Action and
Copei. The previous year had seen two
coup attempts in February and November, reflecting widespread popular discontent with the political establishment.
Rafael Caldera, founder of Copei, rejected his old party and led a "
National Convergence" of 17 smaller parties — including the
Movement for Socialism, the
Democratic Republican Union, the
People's Electoral Movement and the
Communist Party of Venezuela. His campaign promises included pardoning the 1992 coup plotters, including
Hugo Chávez. The presidential election was held under
first-past-the-post voting, while the Congressional elections were the first held under a
mixed member proportional representation system, The traditionally dominant Democratic Action and Copei "supported it because it looked the most like the system under which they had prospered". The MMP system continued to use the old formula of assigning seats to states based on multiplying the total population by 0.55%, with a minimum of three deputies from each state (thus over-representing sparsely populated states). ==Results==