Riding The Storms: Venezuela's 'indestructible' Nicolas Maduro

Caracas, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Mar, 2024) Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro has been written off many times during a turbulent decade in power. But the former bus driver and anointed heir of Hugo Chavez has stubbornly clung to the wheel.

With neither the charisma, popularity, nor flush oil revenues of his late revolutionary mentor, Maduro is accused by rights groups of embracing full-blown authoritarianism to remain in power.

There had been little suspense in the run-up to Saturday's announcement that he will be the ruling PSUV party's candidate in July 28 presidential elections.

The 61-year-old will be seeking a third consecutive six-year term with his political opposition all but kneecapped.

Tall, and sporting an abundant mustache and slicked-back greying hair, Maduro was thrust into power as the handpicked successor of Chavez, who died of cancer in 2013.

Struggling to gain respect as the legitimate successor to still-popular Chavez, Maduro won his first election with a razor-thin margin.

Since then, he has fended off crisis after crisis, ruling with an increasingly iron fist and consolidating power even as life for the average Venezuelan grew ever more miserable.

Millions of Venezuelans have fled a dire economic crisis, marked by runaway inflation and critical shortages, as an oil boom went bust partly due to a plunge in global crude prices.

- Baseball and salsa -

Born in Caracas and a professed Marxist and Christian, Maduro as a teenager played guitar in a rock band called Enigma. He is a baseball fan and dances salsa.

He became a union leader for workers on the Caracas metro and went to communist Cuba in the 1980s to be educated.

Elected to the National Assembly when Chavez swept to power, he rose to become speaker of the legislature before taking over as foreign minister in 2006 and then vice president in October 2012.

In December of that year, Chavez officially declared Maduro his successor before travelling to Cuba for cancer treatment.

He died three months later and Maduro took over, much to the surprise of even some in the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

It was not the first nor last time Maduro was underestimated. In fact, he has embraced criticism that he is boorish and provincial to try and cast himself as a "worker president."

It has even been claimed that he deliberately misspeaks in English so as not to be mistaken for high-brow.