“The transition could be completed in ten months”

The Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado He assured this Sunday that in “a few weeks” he will return to his country to be able to consolidate a great national agreement between various sectors and prepare for a “new and gigantic” electoral victory.

“I am going to return to Venezuela in a few weeks. I want to do it as hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan exiles around the world also wish,” the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner said in a video published on her social networks.

Machado has indicated that there is a clear roadmap to follow, among them, strengthening the “union of Venezuelans” that began with the 2023 opposition primaries and continued with the commands, political and social organizations for the 2024 presidential elections, in which the electoral body – similar to Chavismo – proclaimed the victory of Nicolás Maduro.

The opposition leader insisted that the victory in those elections belonged to the majority opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia.

Likewise, he maintained that it is necessary to finish consolidating a great national agreement with political and social organizations and leaders to establish consensus to “achieve governability throughout this transition process and in democratic Venezuela.”

Machado thanked the United States, his Government, congressmen, judges and soldiers who “risked their lives for the freedom of Venezuela,” in reference to the capture of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in an attack on Caracas and three other nearby regions on January 3.

“President Donald Trump, with vision and courage, put Nicolás Maduro in front of international justice,” he noted.

The former deputy has indicated that the Government in charge of Delcy Rodríguez wants to “gain time” but that they must now follow “instructions to advance in the dismantling of repression, the economic recovery” of the country and “move towards the transition.”

On February 6, Machado said that there could be democratic elections in Venezuela in less than a year, according to an interview published with the digital media Political.

“We believe that a real transition process with manual voting (…) the entire process could be completed in nine or ten months. But, well, that depends on when it starts,” said Machado, who left Venezuela in December for Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, after spending almost a year in hiding.