The Executive Vice President and the Absence of the President of the Republic

This paper contains a descriptive study and a qualitative, critical analysis of the role of the Executive Vice President in cases of the absence of the President of the Republic, with special attention to the situation at the beginning of the 2013-2019 presidential period, with out proper swearing-in and inauguration of the President elect. The study begins considering that the Constituent Assembly of 1999 adopted reforms in accord with the wave of de bate from the 1980s and 1990s, including the figure of the Executive Vice-President. However, development of a power concentration process has produced distortions that make it difficult to evaluate the designed system, which should not be confused with the reality of the presidential system during the Chavez government. All this has affected the role of the Vice President, especially in his function as a substitute for the President of the Republic, becoming more symptomatic at that juncture.