“We will stay here until there is a military intervention or the electoral court changes what is happening,” said Antoniel Almeida, 45, the owner of a party-supply store who was helping run the blockade. Mr. Almeida believed the election was rigged. “We need an investigation,” he said.

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.

In an attempt to limit the opposition’s ability to organize a campaign to unseat him, Maduro pushed for an early presidential election, which ultimately was scheduled for May 2018. The most popular likely opposition candidates were already prohibited from running for office or were in prison, and, convinced that the contest would be rigged in Maduro’s favour, opposition leaders called for a boycott of the election. Nonetheless, Henri Falcón, onetime governor and disaffected former Chávez supporter, undertook an active campaign, as did evangelical minister Javier Bertucci.

The Unitary Platform’s primary had 10 candidates, including Machado, who does not belong to the group but was allowed to run as an independent. Candidates she defeated have rallied around her.

In his acceptance speech on Sunday night, Mr. da Silva recognized the country’s deep division and said he would seek to unite the nation.

Reuters Panamá diz qual voos estão operando normalmente depois qual avião de modo a Venezuela foi bloqueado

Originally scheduled for December 2016 but postponed by the election commission, gubernatorial elections were held in Venezuela’s 23 states in mid-October 2017. Preelection preference polling had indicated that the opposition was poised to gain control of a majority of the states for the first time in some two decades.

The document mentions that the current president of the CNE incurs in "a serious error, and even an irresponsibility, when she affirms that Maduro's nationality 'is not a motto of the National Electoral Council'" and the signatories also refer to the four different moments in which different politicians have awarded four different places of birth as official.[195] Diario Las Amfoiricas claimed to have access to the birth inscriptions of Teresa do Jesús Moros, Maduro's mother, and of José Mario Moros, his uncle, both registered in the parish church of San Antonio of Cúcuta, Colombia.[195]

The international community has been divided for some time over how to respond to Venezuela, with some governments’ conceding privately that the sanctions haven’t “worked”, either by incentivising regime change or compelling President Maduro to hold fair elections.

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Mr Bolsonaro maintained that he "simply explained how elections work in Brazil" and did not criticise or attack the electoral system.

In a 2010 essay for Marie Claire, his first wife, Justine Musk, a writer whom he met in college and vlogdolisboa married in 2000, wrote that even before making his millions Mr Musk was "not a man who takes pelo for an answer".

However, the opposition indicated that it would not roll back popular social reforms instituted by the PSUV.