of each party signed the pact. These men included Rómulo Betancourt of AD, Rafael Caldera of COPEI, and Jóvito Villalba of the URD. Both Betancourt and Caldera would go on to become presidents of Venezuela. The pact served to deepen democracy in the region in that it ensured respect of the democratic process of the election. This allowed for the uncontested democratic election of Rómulo Betancourt, and Betancourt would go on for the first time in the Venezuelan history of the 20th century to finish the tenure of a government elected by universal suffage. In 1962, URD refused to sign the Costa Rica agreement, which excluded Cuba from the Inter-American system. The decision was accompanied by the immediate withdrawal of the tripartite coalition in the government of Rómulo Betancourt. Deterioration COPEI and AD became increasingly reliant on the shared oil revenues to secure their power over Venezuelan politics through a system of patronage and clientelism, and the bipartisanship began to deteriorate in the 1980s as oil revenues took a sharp decline. This led to increasing public distrust of the legitimacy of the AD and COPEI, and what began as democratic deepening began to deteriorate. More formal opposition emerged in the late 1980s. One of the first indicators of public unrest was on the Caracazo on 27 February 1989, where there were riots due to an increase in the prices of public transportation and gas. In the 1993 presidential elections the former leader of COPEI, Rafael Caldera, was elected president under a different party, Convergencia. Presidential candidate Hugo Chávez ran on a platform of attacking the AD and COPEI bipartisanship in his 1998 election campaign, promising to break the traditional system. See also Moncloa Pacts National Front (Colombia) Turno References External links Pacto de Puntofijo, in Spanish. 1958 in Venezuela Defunct political party alliances in Venezuela Political history of Venezuela Politics of Venezuela Rafael Caldera 1958 documents