By Earl Bousquet

   The president, starting his third term that will last until 2031, recalled that he took office in 2013 wearing Chavez’s sash, as he inherited and also intended to fulfil Chavez’s main mission of continuing to build a new Venezuela.

   Addressing over 2,000 delegates from 120 nations -as well as the nation and the world through a live telecast- Maduro assured that he and the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) remain committed to not only fulfilling the principles embedded in Chavez’s legacy, but also to implement seven transformative policies during his second six-year term.

   Maduro indicated the “Seven Transformations for Change” would include: Consolidation of Prosperity in Venezuela; Achieving Economic Diversification; Expanding ‘The Bolivarian Doctrine’; Achieving Peace, Security, Defence and Territorial Integrity; Recovery and Social Commitment; Democracy, Popular Power and Participation; and Combating the Climate Crisis.

   The president noted that his re-election and inauguration was “an act of consolidation of our great constitutional victory” and assured that Venezuela’s unprecedented levels of national consultations will continue, indicating there will soon be “a new national dialogue to reform the constitution.”

   Maduro’s inauguration at the National Assembly was attended by leaders from many Caribbean and Latin American nations, including Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Brown, Bolivian President Luis Arce, Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and St. Vincent & The Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves.

   President Maduro was congratulated in speeches by Arce and Ortega, while the Bolivarian Armed Forces pledged their continuing loyalty to the President and the Constitution.

   Following his third inauguration, the president embarked on a motorcade across the streets of Caracas, where he was applauded by thousands of jubilant supporters gathered outside the Miraflores presidential palace and along city streets.

   The inauguration was incident-free on Friday night, with delegates in Caracas both perplexed by and dismissive of the announcement by the outgoing Joseph Biden administration of a $25 million bounty for “information leading to Maduro’s arrest”.

One Caribbean delegate commented: “That sounds more like Biden’s Last Stand, than anything practical…”

   Others noted it might be more of an effort to embarrass incoming President Donald Trump, who’s signaled his readiness to engage with Maduro if his administration agrees to welcome Venezuelans the incoming US President intends to deport as part of his master plan to arrest, encamp and expel “illegal immigrants” from the USA soon after taking office.

   Biden’s announcement of the bounty on the Venezuelan President’s head came on the same day that a Manhattan (New York) judge sentenced incoming President Trump to a “non-custodial sentence” in his ’hush-money trial’ involving a popular porn star -meaning, he will not be jailed, fined or in any other way punished by the court.

    But since the incoming president was found “guilty as charged” by a jury of his peers, the judge turned-down the latest of several bids by Trump’s legal team to have the case dropped on various grounds -including ‘presidential immunity’, which he reminded the court “did not apply” to incoming presidents before taking office.

   Therefore, as a result of his conviction in the Stormy Daniels case, Trump will make history as the first US president to take office as a convicted felon.

    The day before (January 9), Biden and the five other living US ex-presidents -George Bush (Senior and Junior), Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Trump- gathered at the funeral in Washington of ex-President Jimmy Carter.

   Trump was visibly side-lined by most of his predecessors and their wives, as well as by outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris, who he defeated in the November 5, 2024 poll to return to the White House on January 20.

    But the US press focused on several interesting aspects of the Carter funeral ceremony, including an unusual articulated exchange between Obama and Trump before the service began.

   Meanwhile, the opposition (at home and abroad) mounted a small demonstration in Miranda state two days before Maduro’s inauguration (Wednesday), which turned out to be an international embarrassment for Maria Corina Machado, the main opposition leader behind former presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.

   Citizen Security Minister Diosdado Cabello publicized a plot that was to have seen Machado arrested by security forces and resulted in an international outcry against Maduro, the Venezuelan government and the security forces, for “arresting and detaining” her -and even claiming she was “shot at”.

   None of that happened, as the police and security forces, instead of arresting Machado, reportedly supplied her with gas after her vehicle ran-out of fuel.

She eventually released a video online in which she declared she was “safe and well” -and never arrested.

   But several governments, politicians and ‘human rights’ entities in Latin America, the US and Europe had already issued prepared public condemnatory statements, most of which had to be withdrawn by embarrassed international right-wing supporters of Machado and Gonzalez.

   Likewise, other parts of the exposed plot -first to ‘inaugurate’ Gonzalez in Caracas in the presence of nine ex-Latin American presidents at an unidentified foreign embassy and secondly to do the same in the Dominican Republic on January 10- both failed after the ex-presidents were declared ‘persona non-grata’ in Venezuela.

   Another of outgoing US President Biden’s ‘last stands’ was to have Washington embrace and recognize Gonzalez as ‘Venezuela’s president’ -again just days before the one-term president departs the White House.

   But none of all the above meant anything much in Venezuela, where, unlike the soon-outgoing one-term US President issuing a multi-million-dollar bounty on his head, President Maduro has taken office for a third consecutive term -and President Trump will be returning to the Oval Office at 16 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, for a second time, in just a few days.