Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has been sworn in for a 3rd six-year time period, regardless of an outpouring of worldwide condemnation following July’s contested presidential election.
Standing earlier than the Nationwide Meeting within the capital Caracas on Friday, Maduro took the oath of workplace with a pledge that his subsequent time period could be a “interval of peace”.
However the lead-up to his inauguration was greeted with demonstrations and accusations of presidency repression and electoral fraud.
Protesters on Thursday took to the streets each in Venezuela and different international locations with giant Venezuelan diaspora communities, together with Spain, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and El Salvador.
On the rally in Caracas, opposition chief Maria Corina Machado got here out of hiding for the primary time in months to encourage supporters to take care of stress on Maduro and his authorities.
She was briefly detained by safety forces after her public look, in keeping with her workforce. Different opposition leaders have been detained or face warrants for his or her arrest.
The opposition accuses Maduro, 62, of stealing final 12 months’s July 28 election, and the USA, the European Union and a number of other Latin American international locations have recognised opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as Venezuela’s official president-elect.
Critics denounced a brand new wave of repression within the lead-up to Friday’s ceremony, with a number of activists and opposition figures arrested in latest days, prompting the UN to precise alarm.
Simply Thursday, at the least 17 protesters had been detained, in keeping with a put up on the social media platform X by Gonzalo Himiob of the NGO Foro Penal.
Maduro had ordered the deployment of hundreds of police and troopers to take care of safety upfront of the inauguration, notably within the capital Caracas.
Armed army personnel guarded the streets, lots of which had been closed off for the ceremony, and site visitors was considerably lighter than regular as police manned quite a few roadblocks.
