María Corina Machado assures that Maduro “will leave power”

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 we are ready to offer guarantees, which we will not make public until we are seated at the negotiating table," Machado said in a video conference interview with the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.

"If he (Nicolás Maduro) insists, the consequences will be his direct responsibility . No one else's," the Venezuelan opposition leader warned 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 repression is increasing. This is a way of trying to appear strong, because they know that everything that's happening is a fatal blow," the opposition member argued.

In addition to the Nobel Peace Prize award, Machado pointed to the United States' dispatch of warships to the Venezuelan coast, which have already sunk four vessels described by Washington as being involved in drug trafficking.

On Sunday, in an interview with the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv, Machado said that he would 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 Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Committee.

The opposition leader emphasized that, in order to go to Oslo, Venezuela needs to be free.

"I've learned to live day to day, and the Venezuelan people are doing everything they can" for their future, the political leader added.

Since 2024, the Nobel Peace Prize winner has been claiming what she insists was the victory of opposition leader Edmundo González in the presidential elections of July 28 of that year.

Edmundo González Urrutia is currently in exile in Spain.

For María Corina Machado and the largest opposition coalition, the Unitary Democratic Platform, Urrutia was the winner of the election, 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 after being declared ineligible.

“I will be wherever I can be most useful to our country,” he added.

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