OSLO, 10 Oct. - (ANA) - María Corina Machado, the Nobel peace Prize winner, is regarded as a leading opponent of Nicolás Maduro’s government.

 

The Nobel Peace Prize committee’s role is to choose a person - or group - that has done the most to “promote fraternity between nations”, in keeping with the will of the award’s founder Alfred Nobel.

 

Ms Machado has emerged as one of the strongest and most critical voices denouncing Nicolás Maduro’s regime and its campaign of repression. Her powerful social movement brought thousands to the streets before the election last year and she was banned from standing against Maduro.

 

Edmundo González Urrutia, a relatively unknown opposition candidate, won about 70 per cent of the vote, but Maduro declared victory and refused to hand over power. After the election, Maduro’s forces crushed protests and arrested opposition figures.

 

Mr González fled into exile in Spain, while Ms Machado went into hiding in Venezuela. She has not been seen in public since January, leaving her refuge only on a handful of occasions, and has not seen her three children in months.

 

Mr González called her win a “very well-deserved recognition for the long fight of a woman and of a whole people for our freedom and democracy”. He posted a video of himself speaking by phone with Ms Machado on Friday. “I am in shock,” she said, adding, “I cannot believe it.”

 

Ms Machado told Kristian Berg Harpviken, the director of the Nobel Institute, she was confident the opposition would succeed in securing a peaceful transition to democracy in her country.

 

“We’re not there yet. We’re working very hard to achieve it, but I’m sure that we will prevail,” she told Mr Harpviken when he called to inform her that she had won the prize.

 

“This is certainly the biggest recognition to our people [who] certainly deserve it,” she said, adding: “I am just, you know, one person. I certainly do not deserve it.”   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/10 October 2025  - - -