David Smolansky

David Smolansky Urosa (born 27 May 1985) is a Venezuelan political leader, former Mayor of El Hatillo municipality in Caracas, and former Special Envoy of the Organization of American States for the Venezuelan migration and refugee crisis. Smolansky is a pro-democracy activist and freedom fighter, who has led non-violent protests against the Maduro regime. He was forced into exile in 2017, after the regime-controlled Supreme Court issued Smolansky with an illegal arrest warrant, voided his passport, removed him from office, and arbitrarily banned him from holding public positions. Smolansky's case has been brought before the International Criminal Court and was featured in reports by the OAS and the United Nations on potential crimes against humanity.

Smolansky is currently based in Washington, DC and has been the Campaign Manager for the Venezuelan diaspora and Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Opposition Presidential Candidate, Maria Corina Machado, since 2023. He is also a Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Early life
Smolansky was born in Caracas, Venezuela in May 1985. He is a second generation descendant of immigrants who left the Communist bloc. His grandparents fled Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union and settled in Cuba where they lived for 43 years; in 1970 they escaped from Cuba to Venezuela when his father was 13 years old. The son of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, he received a multicultural and multireligious family education.

Education
Smolansky received his bachelor's degree in journalism from the Andres Bello Catholic University, and a master's degree in International Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is also a Global Competitiveness Leadership Program alumnus at Georgetown University, a Draper Hills Fellow at Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University.

Student Movement
Smolansky began his public appearances as one of the college students who led protests against the kidnapping and murder of the Faddoul brothers in Caracas. Subsequently, he became one of the leaders of the student movement that protested the closure of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) to claim the right to freedom of expression which would afterwards win the elections in 2007, in which was rejected Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez' proposal to reform the Constitution. In 2009, the elections known as Constitutional Referendum 2009 occurred in which Smolansky actively participated from the student leadership in the months before the elections, in the various protests and student demonstrations in rejection of the presidential proposal and the election day with the deployment to serve as board members and witnesses.

Popular Will Party and Democratic Unity Roundtable
After having completed his studies, he began his political career in the beginnings of the Democratic Unity Roundtable where he joined its communications team. At the same time, in 2009 he became a founding member of the Popular Will Party in which he served as national manager of the youth division and was subsequently chosen as a member of the national leadership of the party with more than 60 thousand votes in open primaries (being the second highest vote). Being a Popular Will activist and a member of the Popular Democratic Unity Roundtable, he actively participated in the 2012 electoral processes, both primary and presidential and then regional.

Mayor of El Hatillo
On 14 July 2013, primary elections were done inside the Popular Will Party for the office of Mayor in El Hatillo, faced David Smolansky against Eduardo Battistini, winning with 514 votes against 350, translated into 59%. Later that year, in December elections were participating Miguel Mariño for the Venezuela's United Socialist Party, Elias Sayegh for Primero Justicia party, Diana D'Agostini for Accion Democratica party and David Smolansky for the Popular Will party; the last three were all candidates for the Democratic Unity Roundtable coalition (DUR), this was due El Hatillo being the only municipality within the metropolitan area of Caracas where there was no consensus on a single candidate by the DUR. Smolansky was victorious with 13,607 votes or 44.24% and a comfortable margin of 12.8 points over Sayegh who obtained 9,567 votes (31.11%), both above Mariño who would get the third place with 3,520 votes or 11.44%.

On 8 December 2013 he was elected El Hatillo municipality's Mayor for the period 2014–2018. In October, 2014 the Municipal Development Plan (MDP) was unveiled after consultation processes using a Participative Budget, tours and meetings with the different communities; the purpose of the Municipal Development Plan was to guide management so that there's no room for improvisation, not only sets out the main goals, but also how they should be fulfilled (referring to transparency, participation and use of modern technology) and how to get to them (human capital and financial sustainability). Smolansky has placed particular emphasis on generating strategic alliances with the private sector, the NGO sector and universities. So far they have materialized over 200 alliances that result in improved quality of life for hatillanos and greater institutional development for the municipality.

In 2014, following his election as mayor, he was one of the founders of the Mayors Association for Venezuela, as a member of the directive, which aims to make common front ( including all mayors belonging to the Roundtable) against problems of the country, marked by the Association itself as " fighting together against government measures that are dragging Venezuela into the abyss".In October, 2015, David Smolansky received the Heinz Sonntag Youth Prize 2015-2017 awarded by the Hannah Arendt Observatory in recognition of his career and perseverance in the defense of democratic values and peace. In November, he won the Outstanding Young Political World 2015 award, presented in the city of Kazanawa in Japan for his performance in local management and also for defending Venezuelan freedom.

Given the persecution in recent years of activists, politicians and especially mayors and former mayors who oppose the government of Nicolas Maduro, Smolansky has placed special emphasis on the defense of political prisoners and decentralization in Venezuela. Currently in Venezuela there are about 77 mayors from the political opposition with open legal proceedings, of which David Smolansky is one of them.

Awards and recognition
Smolansky was recognized by the Junior Chamber International as World's Outstanding Young Politician 2015. In the same year, he won the Heinz-Sontag Award for Youth from the Hannah Arendt Observatory in Venezuela. He was identified by Americas Quarterly as one of the ten leaders who would help rebuild Venezuela after the present regime. In 2018, he was recognized with the Global Competitiveness Leadership Impact award by Georgetown University.