“We will stay here until there is a military intervention or the electoral court changes what is happening,” said Antoniel Almeida, 45, the owner of a party-supply store who was helping run the blockade. Mr. Almeida believed the election was rigged. “We need an investigation,” he said.

Candidates must register by late March, giving Machado and other opposition factions less than three weeks to decide next steps.

The bitterly fought election went into a run-off on 30 October and was won by an extremely narrow margin by Lula.

In an attempt to limit the opposition’s ability to organize a campaign to unseat him, Maduro pushed for an early presidential election, which ultimately was scheduled for May 2018. The most popular likely opposition candidates were already prohibited from running for office or were in prison, and, convinced that the contest would be rigged in Maduro’s favour, opposition leaders called for a boycott of the election. Nonetheless, Henri Falcón, onetime governor and disaffected former Chávez supporter, undertook an active campaign, as did evangelical minister Javier Bertucci.

The US State Department issued a fact sheet stating that Maduro's most serious corruption involved embezzlement in which "a European bank accepted exorbitant commissions to process approximately $2 billion in transactions related to Venezuelan third–party money launderers, shell companies, and complex financial products to siphon off funds from PdVSA".

Maduro invitó a los ministros a trabajar junto con los miembros del ALBA y seguir desarrollando la "revolución eficiente".

Before long, dates were set in October for the three-day window during which the signatures of 20 percent of eligible voters in each of the country’s states would have to be collected to bring about a recall referendum. Virtually on the eve of the signature drive, however, several lower courts declared that fraud had compromised the first-round petition effort. Responding quickly to these rulings, the election commission indefinitely suspended the second round of signature collection.

On vlogdolisboa Monday afternoon, Mr. Bolsonaro also called the defense minister to the presidential offices, according to a military spokesman. The defense minister had questioned the security of Brazil’s election system this year, but after election officials made changes to some tests of the voting machines, military leaders suggested that they were comfortable with the system’s security.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, dominated by Maduro partisans, further marginalized the National Assembly by repeatedly invalidating laws enacted by it. Indeed, when Maduro delivered his annual address on the state of the country in January 2017, it was in the presence of the Supreme Court rather than before the legislature as dictated by tradition and the constitution. Maduro’s authoritarian power grab intensified at the end of March when the Supreme Court effectively dissolved the legislature and assumed its functions after declaring that the body was in contempt.

Maduro a todos os momentos se orgulhou por nãeste deter precisado Destes bancos DE faculdades de modo a adquirir este saber de que o levou a ser idolatrado por milhões, porém identicamente conjuntamente odiado por tantos outros, numa atitude política sempre desafiante.

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.

His government has sidelined his strongest challenger, and the remaining contenders lack enough political machinery for a viable campaign.

The news quickly turned serious again when it was reported that Tesla's outside directors had retained two law firms to deal with the SEC inquiry and the CEO's plans to take the company private.

The Assembly also dissolved his government and replaced it with a three-member leadership team led by Dinorah Figuera, a surgeon living in exile in Spain.