Venezuela's Maduro To Take Presidential Oath Despite Domestic, Global Outcry

Caracas, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Jan, 2025) 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.