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Alfredo Pena
Central University of Venezuela alumni
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Alfredo Pena is a Venezuelan journalist and politician.
He studied journalism at the Central University of Venezuela and became well-known after he was hired as the director of the newspaper El Nacional. He also hosted his own interview program on the television channel Venevision, in which he severely criticized the two dominant parties of the second half of the twentieth century in Venezuela, AD and COPEI. His late-night TV program faced harsh criticism over its main theme and it changed names from "Conversaciones con Alfredo Pena" to a more aggressive "Los Penonazos de Pena". During this time he suffered several attempts on his life, one of them occurring in his apartment, presumably not only to kill him but to destroy his computer and archives. In 1998 he supported the candidacy of Hugo Chavez for the Presidency of Venezuela, and invited Chavez to his program in several occasions.
In 1999, Pena quit his television program and became one of the prominent members of the Fifth Republic Movement. President Chavez named him Minister of the Secretary of the Presidency. Pena later was elected to the committee, becoming its president. The committee wrote the 1999 Constitution. In the year 2000 he became Mayor of Caracas (Alcaldia Mayor de Caracas) for the Fifth Republic Movement after winning the elections by a landslide. His nomination for Mayor by the Fifth Republic Movement created division within the party, as Aristobulo Isturiz, chair of the party Patria Para Todos, also wanted the position. Patria Para Todos then abandoned the coalition with the Fifth Republic Movement, only to join it again 18 months later.
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Alfredo Pena
