Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, in office 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 Maria 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 government denied arresting her.
US President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday branded Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia — the man 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 had tightened punitive measures against the Maduro regime for anti-democratic actions. The sanctions were partly lifted, then reimposed, by his successor Joe Biden and may well be hardened in Trump’s next term.
Colombia, whose leftist President Gustavo Petro is historically an ally of Maduro, also condemned the “systematic harassment” of Machado, 57.
Ecuador denounced what it called the Maduro “dictatorship,” while Spain expressed “total condemnation” of Machado’s detention, albeit brief.
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 Gonzalez 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 neighborhood terror.
Former diplomat Gonzalez 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 $100,000 government reward for his capture have been plastered all over Caracas.
Gonzalez 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 US President Joe 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 Chavez, 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.
