Nicolas Maduro is set to be sworn in for a third term as president of Venezuela today, despite a widespread belief at home and abroad that he lost the election.
Maduro will extend his rule over the struggling South American country to 2031 after his inauguration, which will take place against a backdrop of protests and allegations of repression.
Thursday saw hundreds of opposition protesters take to the streets of Caracas as they called for Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia—a retired diplomat recognized by the United States and others as the victor of last year’s vote—to be installed instead.
Gonzalez, who fled to exile in Spain in September 2024, has vowed to return by the time of the inauguration, but whether he is currently in the country is unclear, and the Maduro regime has repeatedly threatened him with arrest should he step on Venezuelan soil.
On Tuesday, Gonzalez said his son-in-law Rafael Tudares had been kidnapped in Caracas with his daughter, Mariana Gonzalez de Tudares, suggesting in a statement that the government had abducted her husband.
“At what point did being related to Edmundo González Urrutia become a crime?” she asked.
Though Gonzalez’s whereabouts were unknown, another opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, was present at the rally after spending months in hiding.
The popular former national assembly member, whom the regime has barred from running for public office, addressed the rally from on top of a truck saying, “They wanted us to fight each other, but Venezuela is united, we are not afraid.”
She then left on a motorcycle with her security, but her press team later announced on social media that security forces “violently intercepted” her convoy.
About an hour after her purported apprehension, a proof-of-life, 20-second video of Machado emerged online in which she says she was followed after leaving the “wonderful” rally and had dropped her purse.
Machado’s aides later said via social media that the video message had been coerced and that only after recording it was she freed, adding that she would later provide details of her “kidnapping.”
She also said that a person was shot “when the repressive forces of the regime” arrested her.
Support has flowed in for the opposition from across the Americas and Europe, with much international opprobrium poured on the Maduro regime for suppressing opposition voices.
Maduro’s supporters denied Machado had been arrested, accusing regime opponents of spreading fake news to engineer an international crisis.
The protests and international condemnation ahead of Maduro’s inauguration only compound the allegations his regime has engaged in savage repression and vote rigging.
More than 2,000 people were arrested during post-election demonstrations, with opposition leaders, lawyers, activists, journalists, and minors among those detained.
Unlike previous presidential elections in Venezuela, government authorities have not published vote counts, but the opposition has revealed tally sheets from more than 80 percent of the nation’s electronic voting machines and said they showed Gonzalez had won twice as many votes as Maduro.
The Atlanta-based Carter Center, which Maduro’s government invited to observe the election, has declared the tally sheets published by the opposition legitimate.
It is currently unclear whether any heads of state are planning to attend Friday’s inauguration ceremony at the legislative palace in Caracas.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a close ally of Maduro, said he would skip the event, citing the detentions earlier in the week of another longtime Venezuelan opposition member and a human rights activist.
Maduro’s 2019 inauguration was attended by Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and then-Bolivian President Evo Morales.
The 2018 election, which saw him returned for a second time, was widely considered to have been rigged after his government banned major opposition parties from participating.
