Nobel Prize winner Machado says Venezuela is in ‘chaos’ under current regime – NPR

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Nobel Prize winner Machado says Venezuela is in ‘chaos’ under current regime

October 11, 20255:42 PM ET, By Alana Wise

Venezuela opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado said in an interview with NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday that her country is in chaos and called for the removal of Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro.

Speaking while still in hiding within Venezuela’s borders, the far-right leader decried Maduro as an illegitimate strongman who had elbowed his way into a third term despite consistent evidence that his administration had rigged the vote.

“I want to be very clear with this: Regime change was already mandated by the Venezuelan people on July 28, 2024,” Machado said during an interview with NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe on Saturday, citing last year’s controversial, closely watched election.

“The narrative of the regime right now is that if Maduro goes, chaos will come to Venezuela. That’s absolutely false,” she said. “Venezuela is in profound, total chaos right now.”

Machado – whom Maduro’s regime had barred from running in the race – had backed opposition candidate Edmundo González in the race to steer Venezuela as it suffers through a political and economic crisis that has forced more than one-fifth of its residents to flee the country.

Machado has been one of the staunchest critics of the powerful United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) since it first came to power in the late 1990s. A former legislator in the Venezuelan National Assembly, Machado has been shot at, targeted by federal prosecutors, banned from running for office, and forced into hiding by the government of Maduro, who succeeded PSUV founder Hugo Chávez in 2013.

“We won by a landslide in the presidential election, and we proved it with over 85% of the original tally sheets. The whole world knows that. Even Maduro’s allies know that he was defeated,” Machado said.

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