He was elected president of Venezuela in 1998

One of the interesting facts about Hugo Chávez is that he was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. Venezuela held presidential elections on December 6, 1998. Hugo Chávez, a professional military commander who led a coup against then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992, and former Carabobo Governor Henrique Salas Römer were the leading candidates. Both candidates represented freshly established parties, a novelty in a country where the primary contenders were always from bipartisan parties. Salas Römer represented Project Venezuela, whereas Chávez represented the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR). Initially polling poorly, Chávez ran on an anti-corruption and anti-poverty platform, criticizing the two major parties that had dominated Venezuelan politics since 1958, and began to gain ground in the polls after the previous front runners faded.

Despite the support of the major parties (Copei and Democratic Action), Chávez was elected to his first term as President of Venezuela. The result of a political realignment was the end of the bipartisanship that had dominated the country's political atmosphere for the previous 40 years, and the beginning of the dominance of the new MVR party (later merged into the United Socialist Party of Venezuela) and the Bolivarian Revolution, a system that still holds political power in Venezuela as of July 2022.