Alfredo Peña

Alfredo Peña (born April 13, 1944 in Barquisimeto, Venezuela) 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 TV channel Venevisión, 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 made harsh criticism it main theme and it changed names from "Conversaciones con Alfredo Peña" to a more aggressive "Los Peñonazos de Peña". During this time he suffered several attempts on his life and one of them in his apartment, presumably not only to kill him but to destroy his computer and archives. During the year 1998, he supported the candidacy of Hugo Chávez for the Presidency of Venezuela, and invited him to his program in several occasions.

In 1999, Peña quits his program and becomes one of the prominent members of the Fifth Republic Movement. President Chávez names him Minister of the Secretary of the Presidency and later he was elected to become part of the committee, becoming its President, which wrote the 1999 Constitution. In the year 2000 he became Mayor of Caracas (Alcaldía Mayor de Caracas) for the Fifth Republic Movement after winning the elections by a landslide. His nomination for Mayor by Fifth Republic Movement created division within the party because Aristóbulo Istúriz, chair of the party Patria Para Todos also wished to occupy the same position. Patria Para Todos, then, abandoned his coalition with Fifth Republic Movement, only to join it again 18 months later. Peña created the "Bratton Plan" (by William Bratton) to modernize the Metropolitan Police.