On Friday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro plans to defy his own people and the democratic world by inaugurating himself for a third consecutive six-year term after stealing an election last July. A fresh Maduro term would perpetuate a regime responsible for an economic collapse virtually unparalleled in peacetime, and a wave of repression that has jailed an estimated 1,800 political prisoners and triggered an exodus of nearly 8mn refugees abroad, more than from Syria or Ukraine.

The democratic opposition, led by María Corina Machado, has led a courageous and peaceful campaign against Maduro’s fraud, providing evidence via copies of official tally sheets from polling stations to show that opposition candidate Edmundo González won the election by a margin of more than two to one.

González has been living in exile in Spain but has promised to return to Venezuela and defy threats of arrest to claim the presidency on Friday, while Machado has been organising protests from a secret hiding place.