Venezuelan opposition parties and their supporters are set to hold protests around the country on Thursday in an eleventh-hour effort to put pressure on President Nicolas Maduro, one day before he is due to be sworn in for his third six-year term.

Fearing that opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez will return to Venezuela this week as promised, strongman Nicolás Maduro has mobilized the country’s military, sending soldiers to patrol the streets in major cities and carrying out new arrests of opponents or individuals he calls mercenaries.

Opponents of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro will take to the streets Thursday, in a last-ditch bid to prevent him from being sworn in for a highly controversial third term as president.

Venezuelan opposition parties and NGOs decried the arrests of a prominent press freedom activist and a well-known opposition figure, among others, ahead of planned protests against Friday's inauguration of President Nicolas Maduro for his third term.

Venezuela's leader Nicolás Maduro announced on state television on 7 January the arrest of seven foreigners whom he accused of being "mercenaries", allegedly trying to prevent him from taking the presidential oath.

Self-exiled Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González is rallying regional support for the opposition's claims that he won the July election against President Nicolás Maduro

Edmundo González has become a beacon of hope for millions of Venezuelans. They want to call him president. He believes he won that office at the ballot box last year. The government of President Nicolás Maduro says he did not.

Venezuela is on tenterhooks as it braces for pro- and anti-government protests Thursday -- the eve of President Nicolas Maduro's swearing-in for a third term rejected by the opposition and much of the international community as illegitimate.

The group includes former presidents Andrés Pastrana of Colombia, Felipe Calderón of Mexico and Jorge Quiroga of Bolivia