CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, making her first public address since her surprise return to the country, endorsed U.S. plans for free elections as soon as next year, a democratic transition that she called “irreversible.”
“I have returned … to mobilize society, to contribute, to organize,” Machado, clad in her trademark white, told cheering supporters at Andrés Bello Catholic University, her alma mater. “And I’ve returned to finish a job and complete a mandate.”
She also criticized what she called a lack of transparency in a U.S. deal for Venezuelan oil, but attributed her ability to return to the country to the U.S. military operation that removed authoritarian socialist President Nicolás Maduro from power in January.
Her homecoming, which has electrified supporters across the country, could test the Trump administration’s control over a nation it has tried to make a neo-colony of the United States. Her return, and concerns that she could galvanize opposition to that arrangement, has prompted both the Trump administration and the Venezuelan government to outline their commitments to democratic elections.
Machado, who polls consistently show is Venezuela’s most popular politician, left the country in December to collect her Nobel Peace Prize. The next month, President Donald Trump ordered Maduro’s removal and said his administration would “run” the country through Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, sidelining Machado.
Her sudden appearance Sunday caught the administration by surprise, according to people familiar with the matter.
Rodríguez has tried to downplay her presence in the country, dismissing it as a “show” and insisting no one in Venezuela is persecuted for their politics. But an hour before Machado’s news conference Thursday, state television broadcast a prerecorded address by Rodríguez in an apparent attempt to get ahead of her rival’s much-anticipated remarks.
“There will be elections” according to the country’s constitution, Rodríguez promised, “organized by a renewed electoral authority and with the world as a witness.”
The interim president, too, wore a white suit. “The election should not be a problem,” she said, “nor should it set us back to times of confrontation that no one wants anymore.”
In an address that at times sounded like a campaign speech, Rodríguez touted advances she said her government has made in the past year, expressed her support for the right to protest peacefully, and ordered security forces not to detain anyone without a judicial order, except when a suspect is caught in the act of a crime.
Machado, who was barred from running for president here in 2024, named and campaigned for a stand-in candidate. Maduro and Rodríguez claimed reelection despite ballot audits that showed Machado’s candidate, Edmundo González, had won more than two-thirds of the votes.
Former opposition lawmakers are now meeting with the Rodríguez government in U.S.-backed negotiations to replace the existing infrastructure for elections next year, a senior State Department official said this week.
The first step, the official said, is to reform the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, which was controlled by Maduro, by the end of this year. Then the sides will overhaul the National Electoral Council. Rodríguez’s government will have to declare a permanent vacancy in the presidency, the official said, to trigger elections within six months. The new electoral council will then determine the date of the election.
Machado said the regime was clearly “following instructions” and credited the United States for bringing a “fundamental change.” Her plan now, she said, was to “organize” more than ever.
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