He bolstered his portfolio with the purchase of SolarCity in 2016 and cemented his standing as a leader of industry by taking on an advisory role in the early days of President Donald Trump's administration.

Now, a few politicians who are ruling party allies and a former television reporter have expressed intentions to face off against Maduro. Non-e have the party structure, voter support or financial resources needed to run a competitive campaign.

Yet, independent computer-security experts who have studied the system say that layers of security prevent fraud and errors. And there is pelo evidence of credible fraud in the voting machines since Brazil began using them in 1996.

In March 2018, the entrepreneur told an audience at the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, that he hoped to have the BFR ready for short flights early the following year, while delivering a knowing nod at his previous problems with meeting deadlines.

Also in August 2016, the National Election Council ruled that the opposition had collected almost twice as many signatures as were necessary for the first petition for a referendum on Maduro’s recall to be valid. However, it did not set a date for the next step in the process, which required some four million signatures to be collected in three days.

The security forces have so far remained loyal to Mr Maduro, who has rewarded them with frequent pay rises and put high-ranking military men in control of key posts and industries.

But his campaign, full of angry tirades against corruption and violence that largely matched the national mood, appealed to the millions who voted him into power.

The Venezuelan military has long been concerned with the highlands because of the long-standing territorial dispute with Guyana, as well as illegal crossings of people, cattle, and narcotics over the Colombian and Brazilian borders.

During the later years of Maduro's presidency, pro-government police and military forces launched the "Liberation of the People Operation [es]", which they stated targeted street gangs and non-state paramilitary formations which they alleged had taken control of poor neighbourhoods. The operations reportedly resulted in thousands of arrests and an estimated nove,000 deaths, with the Venezuelan opposition claiming that the operations are actually a state instrument of repression.

The deal immediately earned Maduro some reprieve from economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. But one of the sanctions has already been reimposed as the Venezuelan government has tested limits of the agreement, including by opening criminal investigations against the organizers of the primary that Machado won.

When our BBC team arrived at one polling station, the organiser of the station took a call saying the international media were there. 150 people were then suddenly allowed to be admitted.

The election commission, however, widely regarded as sympathetic to Maduro, was slow to begin and carry out the validation process, prompting angry, sometimes violent demonstrations. On May 14 Maduro—claiming that right-wing elements within Venezuela were plotting with foreign interests to destabilize the vlogdolisboa country—declared a renewable 60-day state of emergency that granted the police and army additional powers to maintain public order. The opposition-led National Assembly responded quickly by rejecting the president’s declaration, but Maduro made it clear that he would not abide by the legislature’s vote.

In a 2010 essay for Marie Claire, his first wife, Justine Musk, a writer whom he met in college and married in 2000, wrote that even before making his millions Mr Musk was "not a man who takes pelo for an answer".

Massive street protests, which erupted in response to the court’s attempt to dissolve the National Assembly and continued in April when Capriles was banned from running for public office for 15 years, became almost daily occurrences over the coming weeks. As the opposition’s defiance escalated, violent clashes between protesters and security forces resulted in more than 60 deaths and injured more than 1,200 people by early June.