Machado thanks Trump for 'floodgate to freedom' in Venezuela

Caracas — María Corina Machado, Venezuela's opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has thanked the Trump administration for what she called the opening of a "floodgate to freedom", days after returning to Caracas from ten months in exile.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Machado credited US President Donald Trump, his administration and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the January military raid in which US forces seized President Nicolás Maduro from his compound and flew him and his wife to New York to face drug trafficking and other charges, CNA reported. "Thanks to their vision, their courage, and their action on January 3, the floodgate to freedom has been opened," she said.

But she pointedly criticised the oil deal struck between Washington and Caracas earlier this year, under which Venezuela will hand over 20 per cent of its oil reserves to the US. "This agreement does not reflect the levels of transparency that Venezuelan society wants," she said — a rare public split with the administration she had just praised, and one that goes to the heart of the country's economic future.

Machado slipped out of Venezuela last December to collect her Nobel Peace Prize after nearly a year in hiding. She told reporters she had returned to "mobilise society" ahead of future presidential elections. According to The New York Times, she said her return was organised by her own team, not any government — a signal of independence from Washington.

Machado said Rubio had laid out a sequence of steps towards a democratic transition "that makes clear the holding of presidential elections in 2027". Venezuela's interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, repeated the promise of elections on Thursday, again without a date: "There will be elections ... with the world as witness."

The immediate test is whether Rodríguez's interim government names a date. Until then, Washington holds the leverage — and the oil contract Machado wants renegotiated.