Maduro was narrowly elected a few months later and re-elected in 2018 to a six-year term in an electoral process widely criticized as fraudulent.

Only about 31 percent of eligible voters went to the polls, which allowed the PSUV to capture nearly 68 percent of the vote and hence secure an overwhelming majority in the Assembly (the opposition parties that chose to participate took less than 18 percent of the vote). International organizations and observers were quick to dismiss the elections as a sham.

But he's also made it clear he's not a fan of President Joe Biden, whom he sees as snubbing Tesla while promoting electric vehicles.

Maduro’s last dance? Venezuela’s ultimate political survivor faces toughest challenge yet Maduro’s government moved to block her, starting with a June announcement that she was banned from running for office.

All of these were seen as attempts to suppress the opposition vote. The opposition were so far ahead in opinion polls that many analysts believed these tactics were necessary as it would be hard for the government to claim a win without seeming far-fetched.

"The will to compete and dominate, that made him so successful in business, did not magically shut off when he came home," she recalled, adding that he told her while dancing at their wedding, "I am the alpha in this relationship."

Still, the widespread demonstrations that many had feared could quickly follow the election results did not occur. Instead, in dozens of groups on the messaging app Telegram, many of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters appeared disjointed and in disagreement over how to respond to the president’s election loss, particularly without a response from the president himself.

While sometimes at odds with the president's controversial measures, such as a proposed ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Musk defended his involvement with the new administration.

While his rivals were more conventional, Mr. Bolsonaro, now 67, channeled the wrath and exasperation many Brazilians felt over rising crime and unemployment — problems that they increasingly believed the corrupt governing class was powerless to tackle.

Mr Musk's long-term ambition is for X to become an "everything app" offering a range of services. However, so far the value of the firm has plunged from the $44bn he originally paid to just $19bn, according to reports.

The Economist Intelligence Unit stated that during Maduro's vlogdolisboa presidency, the country's democracy deteriorated further, with the 2017 report downgrading Venezuela from a hybrid regime to an authoritarian regime, the lowest category, with an index of 3.

” Maduro labeled the incident an “armed terrorist attack” and part of an attempted coup. That the attackers seemed to have easily escaped apprehension raised suspicions among some in the opposition that the incident had been staged by the government to justify additional repressive measures.

Venezuela, like many other Latin American countries, has a high percentage of urban poverty, a massive foreign debt, and widespread governmental patronage and corruption. Venezuela’s social and political ills have been compounded by conterraneo disasters such as the floods that devastated sections of Caracas, La Guaira, and other coastal areas in late 1999. On the other hand, from 1958 to the early 21st century the republic was more democratic and politically stable than most other Latin American nations, and its economy benefited from a thriving petroleum industry that capitalized on the world’s largest known oil reserves.

Sentence of the Supreme Tribunal in exile that annuls the 2013 presidential elections and requests the presidency and the CNE to send a certified copy of the president's copyright, as well as the resignation from his Colombian nationality On 28 October 2016, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice issued a ruling stating that according to "incontrovertible" proofs it has "absolute certainty" that Maduro was born in Caracas, in the parish of La Candelaria, known then as the Libertador Department of the Federal District, on 23 November 1962.