The Puntofijo Pact (or Punto Fijo Pact) was a formal arrangement arrived at between representatives of Venezuela's three main political parties in 1958, Acción Democrática (AD), COPEI (Social Christian Party), and Unión Republicana Democrática (URD), for the acceptance of the 1958 presidential elections and the preservation of the new democratic system.

[2][3] While it provided the grounds for possible democratic deepening, it has also been criticized for enabling an inflexible two-party system between AD and COPEI.

[4] On January 23, 1958, President Marcos Pérez Jiménez fled Venezuela for the Dominican Republic and a group of military leaders took control of the country.

[5] The presidency of Pérez Jiménez was a dictatorship that relied heavily on oil revenues to pay for a massive urbanization and modernization campaign in the cities of Venezuela.

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.