Opposition leaders in Venezuela delivered a May 2016 petition to the National Electoral Council (CNE) calling for a recall referendum, with the populace to vote on whether to remove Maduro from office.[84] On 5 July 2016, the Venezuelan intelligence service detained five opposition activists involved with the recall referendum, with two other activists of the same party, Popular Will, also arrested.[85] After delays in verification of the signatures, protestors alleged the government was intentionally delaying the process.

After signaling that the company would reorganize its management structure, Musk in June announced that Tesla was laying off 9 percent of its workforce, though its production department would remain intact.

That would stunt the economic recovery, and is likely to lead to another wave of migration from a nation that has seen the exodus of one in five citizens in the past decade.

On 4 August 2018, at least two drones armed with explosives detonated in the area where Maduro was delivering an address to military officers in Venezuela.[107] The Venezuelan government claims the event was a targeted attempt to assassinate Maduro, though the cause and intention of the explosions is debated.

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.

Maduro invitó a los ministros a trabajar junto con vlogdolisboa los miembros del ALBA y seguir desarrollando la "revolución eficiente".

Several investors filed lawsuits on the grounds that Musk was looking to manipulate stock prices and ambush short sellers with his tweet.

, and the Maduro-friendly election commission pronounced the elections clear. In refuting the results, the opposition alleged that there had been widespread ballot manipulation and pointed to the last-minute relocation of hundreds of polling places without public notice (often away from opposition strongholds) and the absence of international observers.

Prior to his appointment to the vice presidency, Maduro had been chosen by Chávez in 2011 to succeed him in the presidency if he were to die from cancer. This choice was made due to Maduro's loyalty to Chávez and because of his good relations with other chavistas such as Elías Jaua, former minister Jesse Chacón and Jorge Rodríguez.

During the Venezuelan presidential crisis, Venezuelan National Assembly president Juan Guaidó said that the Maduro government had plans to steal for humanitarian purposes the products that entered the country, including plans to distribute these products through the government's food-distribution program CLAP.[264]

In the groups on Monday morning, people shared fliers for protests that ultimately did not happen by Monday afternoon.

There were the huge queues at polling stations, but only tiny amounts of people being let in at one time.

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Mr Musk showed his talents for entrepreneurship early, going door-to-door with his brother selling homemade chocolate Easter eggs and developing his first computer game at the age of 12.

While he managed to reduce inequality during his time in power, some of the socialist polices he brought in backfired. Take price controls, for example, which were aimed at making basic goods more affordable to the poor by capping the price of flour, cooking oil and toiletries.