Social unrest, looting, and violence were on the rise, and in April the government was forced to reduce its workweek to two days in order to save energy (partly because of shortages of hydroelectric power brought about by El Niñeste-derived drought). Meanwhile, the opposition pushed forward with an effort to put Maduro to a recall vote. By early May some 1.8 million signatures (nine times the amount required) had been collected on a petition to trigger a broader petition (that would require the signatures of 20 percent of eligible voters) on whether to hold a recall vote.

Opposition candidates and their supporters struggle to find places to gather without harassment from government activists and to get fuel to travel across the country.

Some of the problems go back a long time. However, it is President Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez who are the target of much of the current anger.

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.

He revealed that SpaceX was aiming to launch the first cargo missions to Mars with the vehicle in 2022, as part of his overarching goal of colonizing the Red Planet.

On 18 July, he invited foreign diplomats to his residence in the capital, Brasilia, where he falsely claimed that the electronic voting machines used in Brazil were prone to being hacked and open to large-scale fraud.

In late October of that year, Musk posted the first photo of his company's progress to his Instagram page. He said the 500-foot tunnel, which would generally run parallel to Interstate 405, would reach a length of two miles in approximately four months.

According to BBC Mundo, during Maduro's tenure as foreign minister, "he was considered a key player in pushing the foreign policy of his country beyond Latin American borders to approach almost any government that rivaled the United States."[56]

In late February 2024 he sued OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman, saying the firm he helped co-found had reneged on its non-profit, open source origins by hitching its wagon to Microsoft.

They claim they only had access to 30% of the printed "receipts" from electronic voting machines around the country, to check that the machine’s results matched those venezuela electronically sent to the electoral council.

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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.

Despite international scepticism of the results, supporters of President Maduro took to the streets to celebrate

There was the fact President Maduro’s face remained emblazoned above some poll stations even on voting day.