Venezuela\u2019s Nicolas Maduro has been sworn in for a third presidential term despite the protests of the country\u2019s opposition movement, capping more than five months of dispute over last summer\u2019s contested election. <\/p>\n
The ceremony took place on Friday in a small room of the National Assembly, a marked difference from previous ceremonies held in the building\u2019s main hall. <\/p>\n
Maduro was proclaimed winner of the country\u2019s presidential election on July 28, by electoral authorities under the tight control of the ruling Socialist Party. <\/p>\n
But Venezuela\u2019s opposition published thousands of voting tallies claiming that their candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, had actually won the vote with 67% against Maduro\u2019s 30%. <\/p>\n
Gonz\u00e1lez, who has been in exile since September with a bounty on his head by Venezuelan authorities, had pledged to return to Caracas this week in a potential last challenge to Maduro\u2019s inauguration. His last known location on Friday was the Dominican Republic, where he had recently met with regional leaders. <\/p>\n
Ahead of the inauguration, Venezuela closed its land border and suspended flights to Colombia \u2013 a move that Freddie Bernal, the governor of the Venezuelan border state of Tachira claimed was in reaction to a \u201cinternational conspiracy\u201d against Venezuela in an Instagram post. He did not provide proof for his claim. <\/p>\n
The border closure came just hours after Colombia broke its silence on the issue and announced it would not recognize the results of last summer\u2019s elections, stating they were not free. <\/p>\n
Protests erupted in Caracas and other Venezuelan cities on Thursday ahead of the inauguration, with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado emerging from hiding to speak at one event. <\/p>\n
Machado was later \u201cviolently intercepted\u201d at the event, according to her team, which said that \u201cduring the period of her kidnapping she was forced to record several videos and was later released.\u201d The Venezuelan government has denied detaining Machado. <\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated.<\/i> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Venezuela\u2019s Nicolas Maduro has been sworn in for a third presidential term despite the protests of the country\u2019s opposition movement, capping more than five months of dispute over last summer\u2019s contested election. The ceremony took…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}