Caracas –
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for a third term Friday in a ceremony decried as illegitimate by the opposition and internationally, with Washington offering a $25 million reward for his arrest.
A defiant Maduro, 62, adorned with an oversized yellow, blue and red presidential sash, shrugged off the outcry over his unproven claim to have won another six-year term, saying that his investiture was a “great victory for Venezuelan democracy.”
His challenger in July’s election, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, recognized by the United States and much of Latin America as the legitimate winner, said Maduro had “crowned himself a dictator” and staged a “coup.”