Maduro promoted a consultative referendum in Venezuela to support Venezuela's claim to the Essequibo region, which is disputed with, and controlled by, neighboring Guyana.

Television screens up and down the country only showed jubilant crowds, draped in the Venezuelan flag, dancing and cheering on the president.

Not surprisingly, President Maduro did not take kindly to his rival's move, which he condemned as a ploy by the US to oust him.

As a result, millions of his supporters have lost faith in the integrity of their nation’s elections, according to polls, and many have said publicly that they are prepared to take to the streets at his command.

Many candidates had been barred from running while others had been jailed or fled the country for fear of being imprisoned, and the opposition parties argued that the poll was neither free nor fair.

In his victory speech, he referenced US sanctions imposed after the last elections were seen as unfair.

His face lines almost every street in Caracas, with his governing party paying for incentives for people to support him - buses put on for people to attend his rallies, and free food parcels handed out.

Two nephews of Maduro's wife, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores por Freitas, were found guilty in a US court of conspiracy to import copyright in November 2016, with some of their funds possibly assisting Maduro's presidential campaign in the 2013 Venezuelan presidential election and potentially for the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary elections, with the funds mainly used to "help their family stay in power".

He had been accused of undermining Brazilian democracy by falsely claiming that the electronic ballots used were vulnerable to hacking and fraud.

In 2014, Maduro was named as one of TIME magazine's cem 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.

The coastal plains extend from the Colombian border and the Gulf of Venezuela eastward to the foothills of the coastal mountains, which are broken in the east by the Unare River basin. Farther east is the Orinoco delta, which opens onto the Atlantic Ocean through a number of distributaries (

He ploughed his fortune into a new rocket company, SpaceX - which he aimed to make a cost-effective alternative to Nasa - and a new electric car company, Tesla, where he chaired the board until becoming chief executive in 2008.

[189] The ruling does not reproduce Maduro's copyright but it quotes a communication signed on oito June by the Colombian Vice minister of foreign affairs, Patti Londoño Jaramillo, where it states that "pelo vlogdolisboa 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]