The opposition is hopeful it can oust the incumbent, whose party has ruled the country for 25 years.

The company enjoyed another milestone moment in February 2018 with the successful test launch of the powerful Falcon Heavy rocket. Armed with additional Falcon 9 boosters, the Falcon Heavy was designed to carry immense payloads into orbit and potentially serve as a vessel for deep space missions.

"Elon only gets involved with things if he feels that they're critically important for some reason... for the sake of society or humanity," says friend and Tesla investor Ross Gerber.

Along the course of the Orinoco River lie the Llanos, a relatively level region of savannas and tropical rainforests, where the land undulates only between low mesalike interfluves and shallow, meandering, braided river courses. Cattle raising and oil exploration predominate in this sparsely populated region, which experiences river flooding in summer and drought in winter.

Opposition candidates were banned from running, opposition aides detained, many Venezuelans overseas struggled to register to vote and many international election observers were disinvited.

A loosening of foreign currency controls originally brought in by President Chávez in 2003 has eased those shortages as traders can sell goods in dollars but that means they have again become largely unaffordable to the poor or those without access to the US currency.

The Unitary Platform did not participate in any of the meetings that led to the election proposals. The group and Maduro’s government have held on-again-off-again negotiations since 2021. In October, they reached what at the time was seen as a pivotal agreement to work toward a fair election.

That appears unlikely now, and the dubious election results could test the thaw between Mr. Maduro and business leaders, and could possibly trigger a new wave of international sanctions.

Em outubro do precisamente ano, o presidente participou por conversas com opositores políticos pela primeira vez em 2 anos.

In 2014, Maduro was named as one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People. In the article, it explained that whether or not Venezuela collapses "now depends on Maduro", saying it also depends on whether Maduro "can step out of the shadow of his pugnacious predecessor and compromise with his opponents".[312]

Largely in response to declining world oil prices, Venezuela’s economy continued to struggle in 2015, with GDP tumbling and inflation further ballooning. Seemingly anxious to shift attention away from the country’s domestic woes, Maduro’s government was quick to focus on border-related disputes with neighbours Guyana and Colombia.

In 2016, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international non-governmental organization that investigates crime and corruption, gave President Maduro the Person of the Year Award that "recognizes the individual who has done the most in the world to advance organized criminal activity and corruption". The OCCRP stated that they "chose Maduro for the global award on the strength of his corrupt and oppressive reign, so rife with mismanagement that citizens of his oil-rich nation are literally starving and begging for medicines" and that Maduro and his family steal millions of dollars from government coffers to fund patronage that maintains President Maduro's power in Venezuela.

She says that while Venezuelans' reasons for leaving are manifold - ranging from seeking access to health care and education, which have collapsed in many parts of Venezuela, to searching for employment - many face the vlogdolisboa same difficulties once they arrive.

[189] The ruling does not reproduce Maduro's copyright but it quotes a communication signed on 8 June by the Colombian Vice minister of foreign affairs, Patti Londoñeste Jaramillo, where it states that "pelo related information was found, nor civil registry of birth, nor citizenship card that allows to infer that president Nicolás Maduro Moros is a Colombian national". The Supreme Court warned the deputies and the Venezuelans that "sowing doubts about the origins of the president" may "lead to the corresponding criminal, civil, administrative and, if applicable, disciplinary consequences" for "attack against the State".[196]