The Justice First ( es, Primero Justicia) is a
centre-right
Centre-right politics lean to the right of the political spectrum, but are closer to the centre. From the 1780s to the 1880s, there was a shift in the Western world of social class structure and the economy, moving away from the nobility and ...
political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...
in
Venezuela
Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
. Founded in 1992 as a civil association, it became a political party in 2000.
Henrique Capriles
Henrique Capriles Radonski (; born 11 July 1972) is a Venezuelan politician and lawyer, who served as the 36th Governor of Miranda from 2008 to 2017.
Born in Caracas, he received a degree in law from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, ...
was the candidate of the party in
2013 general election.
History
Justice First was created in 1992 as a civil association by a group of university students under the leadership of Alirio Abreu Burelli. The group was concerned about what they saw as a deterioration of judicial power in the country, and sought a reform of Venezuela's legal system. Abreu Burelli was magistrate of the federal
Supreme Court of Justice
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
and Vice President of the
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR or IACtHR) is an international court based in San José, Costa Rica. Together with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, it was formed by the American Convention on Human Rights, a huma ...
of the
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States (OAS; es, Organización de los Estados Americanos, pt, Organização dos Estados Americanos, french: Organisation des États américains; ''OEA'') is an international organization that was founded on 30 April ...
(OAS).
The association entered the political arena during the
1999 Constituent Assembly of Venezuela
The Constituent National Assembly ( es, Asamblea Nacional Constituyente) 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 abov ...
, in which they presented a draft for the country's
new constitution. Justice First became a political party in 2000, initially as a regional party, and registered as a national party with the
National Electoral Council of Venezuela
The National Electoral Council ( es, Consejo Nacional Electoral) (CNE) is one of the five branches of government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela that was designed to be independent. It is the institution that has the responsibility of ...
on 1 March 2002.
In the
July 2000 legislative elections, five members of Justice First were elected as deputies to the
National Assembly
In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the rep ...
for a five-year term:
Carlos Ocariz
Carlos Eduardo Ocariz Guerra (born 1971, Caracas) is a Venezuelan politician and engineer. He was the mayor and former deputy of Sucre Municipality in east Caracas. Ocariz is a member of Justice First. On 22 February 2012, he announced he plann ...
, ,
Julio Borges
Julio Andrés Borges Junyent (born 22 October 1969, in Caracas) is a Venezuelan politician and lawyer. In the late 1990s he had a TV court show called "Justicia Para Todos" on Radio Caracas Televisión. He co-founded the party Primero Justicia ...
, Ramón Medina and . Justice First participated in the
last minute opposition boycott of the 2005 elections, so they had no representatives in the Assembly from 2005 to 2010. They contested the
2006 presidential elections
Presidential elections were held in Bulgaria on 22 October 2006, as decided on 27 July 2006 by the Bulgarian Parliament. The runoff took place on 29 October 2006, while the electoral campaign spanned 19 September – 20 October. At the election, ...
with former
congressman Julio Borges
Julio Andrés Borges Junyent (born 22 October 1969, in Caracas) is a Venezuelan politician and lawyer. In the late 1990s he had a TV court show called "Justicia Para Todos" on Radio Caracas Televisión. He co-founded the party Primero Justicia ...
, but he dropped out of the race in support of
Manuel Rosales
Manuel Antonio Rosales Guerrero (born December 12, 1952, in Santa Bárbara del Zulia) is a Venezuelan educator and politician, current governor of Zulia, Venezuela's most populated state. He was the most prominent opposition candidate in the ...
, then governor of
Zulia State
Zulia State ( es, Estado Zulia, ; Wayuu language, Wayuu: ''Mma’ipakat Suuria'') is one of the States of Venezuela, 23 states of Venezuela. The state capital is Maracaibo. As of the 2011 census, it has a population of 3,704,404, the largest popu ...
, and former Mayor of Maracaibo.
Henrique Capriles Radonski
Henrique Capriles Radonski (; born 11 July 1972) is a Venezuelan politician and lawyer, who served as the 36th Governor of Miranda from 2008 to 2017.
Born in Caracas, he received a degree in law from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, ...
was elected governor of
Miranda in 2008. The party had six deputies elected at the
2010 parliamentary elections: Tomas Guanipa in Zulia, Juan Carlos Caldera and Julio Borges in Miranda, Dinorah Figuera in the capital district, Richard Mardo in Aragua, and Richard Arteaga in Anzoátegui.
In December 2019, in
Operación Alacrán, the website
Armando.info published an investigation on corruption among opposition politicians, leading to the expulsion of deputies, including
Luis Parra,
José Brito
José Brito (born 19 March 1944) is a Cape Verdean politician.
Biography
Brito was born in Dakar, Senegal (then a French colony) to Cape Verdean parents. Later in his years, he moved to Cape Verde.
Brito holds a bachelor of science in mathemat ...
and , from PJ.
On 2020, José Brito and Conrado Pérez filed a complaint in the
Supreme Tribunal of Justice against the leadership of Justice First. The deputies asked to be restituted in the party, saying that there was no justification to be expelled, and that their due process, right of defense and presumption of innocence had not been respected. They also asked the high court to appoint a new leadership "that was in Venezuela", since the current one was in exile, and to summon new internal elections. The deputies were received by the president of the Constitutional Chamber and the meeting lasted a little more than an hour. Outside the Supreme Tribunal, a group of around two hundred people met in support of the deputies. ''
El Pitazo
''El Pitazo'' is an independent Venezuelan multimedia franchise. The name " pitazo" refers to whistleblowing. It is part of the Latin American media Rebel Alliance, with ''Tal Cual'' and Runrunes. They also collaborate with NGOs to be more inform ...
'' reported that earlier in the morning, some persons were handing out shirts of the party, most apparently new. Several demonstrators interviewed by the outlet expressed ignoring the reasons of the meeting or the contents of the complaint introduced. In some cases, they affirmed having been taken by bus, could not say for long they were part of Justice First, did not know that Luis Parra was not present or declared being paid for assisting. The party's secretary general,
Tomás Guanipa
Tomás Ignacio Guanipa Villalobos (born 31 December 1971, Maracaibo) is a Venezuelan politician who is an incumbent deputy to the National Assembly of Venezuela and the leader of the Justice First party.
Early life
Guanipa is the son of Manu ...
, declared that the deputies sought to give the party's electoral card to Nicolás Maduro.
In January 2020, the disputed
2020 Venezuelan National Assembly Delegated Committee election
The 2020 Venezuelan National Assembly Delegated Committee election was to be held in the ordinary session of the National Assembly on 5 January, in which 160 deputies were to elect the legislature's board of directors for the year 2020–21: the pr ...
took place to determine who would be the
President of the National Assembly for the period 2020-21 period; pro-government MPs and the expelled PJ deputies voted for Parra while the remaining PJ deputies endorsed incumbent president
Juan Guaidó
Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez (born 28 July 1983) is a Venezuelan politician, a former member of the social-democratic Popular Will party, and federal deputy to the National Assembly representing the state of Vargas. On 23 January 2019, Guaidà ...
.
Ideology
The Justice First party is a
catch-all party
A big tent party, or catch-all party, is a term used in reference to a political party's policy of permitting or encouraging a broad spectrum of views among its members. This is in contrast to other kinds of parties, which defend a determined i ...
for left-leaning and right-leaning individuals unified by a common desire to relax Venezuelan social laws and stringent authority which intrudes on the natural freedoms of Venezuela and democracy as a whole. The party includes everyone from
social democrats
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote so ...
to ''
laissez-faire
''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups. ...
'' economists. Despite these differences, their opposition to the socialist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro unifies them and prevents serious infighting. Due to the very diverse makeup of this organization, it is difficult for foreign commentators to analyze its properties and policies. However, some of their listed policies include increasing local autonomy, abolishing the "corrupt" Constituent Assembly, and passing tax cuts and welfare/pension funding increases. Other than that, the organization remains extremely vague.
References
External links
Official website
{{Venezuelan political parties
1992 establishments in Venezuela
Liberal parties in Venezuela
Organizations established in 1992
Political parties established in 2000
Political parties in Venezuela