Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro takes office for the third consecutive term on Friday, amid accusations of electoral fraud, public discontent and strong criticism from the international community and the opposition.
Nicolás Maduro takes office on the 10th for a six-year term, after being declared the winner of the disputed presidential elections in July and having been invited by the Venezuelan National Assembly, the legislative body of the Chavista-majority country, to take the oath.
Maduro, 62, has been president of the South American country since 2013, but began his professional life as a bus driver in Caracas, later becoming a representative of the transport workers' union.
In 1992, during the detention of then army officer Hugo Chávez, who would become President of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013, for having led a failed coup attempt, Maduro and his future wife, Cilia Flores, campaigned for Chávez's release, which was achieved in 1994.
Since then, his political career has been marked by a continuous political rise, driven by President Chávez.
During Chávez’s term, Maduro was elected to the National Assembly in 2000 and was later appointed president of the National Assembly from 2005 to 2006.
The current Venezuelan president was also foreign minister from 2006 to 2012, a period during which he took the opportunity to get closer to controversial leaders such as Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran.
Maduro's prominent role in the executive branch continued to grow, especially when Chávez's health began to decline in 2011, the year he announced he had cancer.
In October 2012, following Chávez's triumph in the presidential elections, Maduro was named vice president. At the same time, his wife, a former president of the National Assembly, served as Venezuela's attorney general, making them one of the country's most powerful couples.
From his wife, Cilia Flores, Maduro has no descendants, but he has a son from a previous marriage: Nicolás Maduro Guerra, 34, member of the Venezuelan National Assembly since 2021.
Before leaving for another round of surgeries in Cuba in December 2012, Chávez named Maduro as his preferred successor if he did not survive.
During this period, Maduro took the reins of leadership and acted as the country's de facto leader, overcoming his main rival in the Chavista apparatus, Diosdado Cabello, and preparing his arrival to the Presidency.
Following the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013, Maduro assumed the presidency and was subsequently declared the winner of an extraordinary presidential election in 2014, with 50.62% of the vote, by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.
Even at that time, his inauguration was the target of strong protests from the opposition and, despite his promises to transform Venezuela into a rich world power, the country's political and economic scenario descended into a nightmare of several crises, marked by high inflation and lack of supplies and medicines, which has led millions of Venezuelans to flee the country in recent years.
Even with his popularity plummeting and against the predictions of economic organizations, Maduro has nurtured hopes of recovering the country, seeking allies with promises of future benefits from the natural wealth of oil and promising Venezuelans a better future.
A staunch supporter of Chavismo, a left-wing political ideology based on the ideas, programs and style of government associated with President Chávez, which includes nationalization policies and social welfare programs, Maduro has ruled Venezuela by decree since 2015, with powers that were granted to him conferred by the National Assembly of Venezuela.
Governance by decree is a style of governance that allows for the rapid and unchallenged enactment of laws by a single person or group of people, usually without legislative approval.
The suppression of democratic values led to Venezuela's suspension from Mercosur (an economic bloc that unites South American countries) in 2017, due to the breakdown of the democratic order in the country.
In the May 2018 elections, when Maduro was re-elected with more than 60% of the vote, the opposition denounced the lack of transparency, illicit pressure on opponents and blackmail of voters.
On July 28, 2024, Venezuela held presidential elections, the victory of which was attributed by the National Electoral Council (CNE) to Nicolás Maduro with just over 51% of the vote, while the opposition claims that Edmundo González Urrutia, currently in exile in Spain, obtained almost 70% of the vote.
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