The winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, María Corina Machado, expressed confidence that the President of Venezuela “will leave power with or without negotiations”, recalling that guarantees were offered to Nicolás Maduro.
“We said that we are ready to offer guarantees, which we will not make public until we are sitting at the negotiating table,” said Machado, in an interview, via videoconference, with the France-Presse news agency (AFP).
“If he [Nicolás Maduro] If you insist, the consequences will be your direct responsibility. From no one else”, warned the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, on Monday.
The President of Venezuela “currently has the opportunity to move towards a peaceful transition. (…) With or without negotiations, he will leave power”, declared María Corina Machado.
“In the last few hours, several comrades have been arrested and the repression is increasing. This is a way of trying to appear strong, because they know that everything that is happening is a fatal blow”, defended the opponent.
In addition to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, Machado pointed to the United States sending warships to the coast of Venezuela, which have already sunk four vessels, described by Washington as dedicated to drug trafficking.
On Sunday, in an interview with the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv, Machado said that he will only be able to travel to Norway, in December, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, if the Venezuelan President leaves power.
“As long as Maduro is in power, I cannot leave the place where I am hiding because there are direct threats against my life,” said the opposition leader.
On Friday, Machado received the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize “for his tireless work in promoting the democratic rights of the Venezuelan people and for his struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”, according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, based in Oslo.
The opposition leader highlighted that, to go to Oslo, Venezuela needs to be free.
“I learned to live day-to-day, and the Venezuelan people are doing everything they can” for their future, added the political leader.
Since 2024, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has claimed what she insists was the victory of opposition leader Edmundo González, in the presidential elections on July 28 of that year.
Currently, Edmundo González Urrutia is in exile in Spain.
For María Corina Machado and the largest opposition coalition, the Unitary Democratic Platform, Urrutia was the winner of the elections, despite the electoral body, controlled by government authorities, having declared Maduro re-elected.
Urrutia “declared that he wants me to accompany him as vice president”, Machado told AFP, who was unable to run as a candidate because she was declared ineligible.
“I will be wherever I can be most useful to our country,” he added.