Venezuela's Maduro to take presidential oath despite domestic, global outcry
President Nicolás Maduro due to be sworn in for a third consecutive term, despite multiple countries recognising opposition rival Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as legitimate president-elect following disputed elections past July.
Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro, in power since 2013, is due to take the oath of office for a third term Friday despite a global outcry that brought thousands out in protest on the ceremony's eve.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado, who came out of hiding to lead a demonstration in Caracas Thursday, was briefly detained after the rally according to her team – reigniting international condemnation of Maduro's alleged vote steal and cowing of critics.
The Maduro government denied arresting her.
US President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday branded Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia – the former diplomat who took her place on the ballot and is widely accepted to have beaten Maduro in elections on July 28 – as "freedom fighters."
They "should not be harmed, and MUST stay SAFE and ALIVE," he wrote on his Truth Social network.
During his first term in office, Trump tightened punitive measures against the Maduro government for anti-democratic actions. The sanctions were partly lifted, then reimposed, by his successor, current US President Joe Biden, and may well be hardened in Trump's next term.
Ecuador denounced what it called the Maduro "dictatorship," while Spain expressed "total condemnation" of Machado's detention, albeit brief.
Colombia, whose leftist President Gustavo Petro is historically an ally of Maduro, also condemned the "systematic harassment" of Machado, 57.
Citing "an international conspiracy to disturb Venezuelans' peace," Freddy Bernal, governor of the frontier state of Táchira, said the border with Colombia was closed on Friday and will reopen Monday.
Machado's team reported on X that she had been "violently intercepted" as she was leaving Thursday's protest, and claimed shots had been fired in the vicinity of her motorcycle convoy.
She was then detained and forced to record a number of videos before being let go, it said.
Machado earlier made a defiant speech to thousands of supporters in central Caracas, sending a message to the government that: "We are not afraid."
There was also a protest in Paris attended by Machado's daughter Ana Corina Sosa and dozens of supporters.
'Wanted'
Government opponents have reported a new wave of repression ahead of Maduro's swearing-in, including the arrest of another opposition presidential candidate, the head of a press freedom NGO, and González Urrutia's son-in-law.
The United Nations voiced alarm this week at reports of arbitrary detention and intimidation.
More than 2,400 people were arrested, 28 killed and about 200 injured in protests that met Maduro's claim of election victory last year.
He has since maintained a fragile peace through massive military and police deployments and with the help of paramilitary colectivos – armed civilian volunteers accused of quelling protest through a reign of neighbourhood terror.
Former diplomat González Urrutia, 75, had voiced tentative plans to fly to Caracas this week to take power but the plan is deemed unlikely to go ahead.
"Wanted" posters offering a US$100,000 government reward for his capture have been plastered all over Caracas.
González Urrutia has been on an international tour seeking to pile pressure on Maduro, 62, to relinquish power.
It has included a stop in Washington to meet Biden, who called for a "peaceful transfer back to democratic rule."
Maduro has been in power since 2013 following the death of left-wing firebrand Hugo Chávez, his political mentor.
His re-election in 2018 was also widely rejected as fraudulent but he managed to cling to power through a mix of populism and repression, even as the economy imploded.
Maduro enjoys support from Russia and Cuba, as well as a loyal military, judges and state institutions in a system of well-established political patronage.
Thousands of ruling party loyalists held a rival demonstration in central Caracas on Thursday, vowing to prevent any attempt to thwart Maduro's return to office.
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