- Machado says Rodriguez is rejected by the Venezuelan people.
- Machado predicts the opposition will win more than 90 percent of the vote.
- Machado is committed to dismantling criminal structures.
WASHINGTON: Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said Monday she plans to return home “as soon as possible,” and criticized the interim president in Caracas.
In her first public comments since a social media post over the weekend when the US military forcibly removed President Nicolas Maduro from power, the Nobel Peace Prize winner vowed to return to her country.
“I plan to return to Venezuela as soon as possible,” Machado told the channel’s Sean Hannity. Fox Newsspeaking from an unknown location.
Machado has openly rejected the country’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, saying she “is one of the main architects of torture, persecution, corruption and drug trafficking.”
Rodriguez, who has signaled a willingness to cooperate with Washington, was Venezuela’s vice president under Maduro.
Machado said Rodriguez was “rejected” by the Venezuelan people and that voters were siding with the opposition.
“In free and fair elections we will win with more than 90% of the votes, I have no doubt,” Machado said.
Machado also pledged to “make Venezuela the energy center of the Americas” and “dismantle all these criminal structures” that have harmed her compatriots, promising to “bring home the millions of Venezuelans who were forced to flee our country.”
Much to the disappointment of the Venezuelan opposition, Trump rejected the idea of Machado, the 58-year-old opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, taking over, saying she lacked support.
Machado was barred from running in the 2024 election but said her ally Edmundo Gonzalez, 76, who the opposition and some international observers say won that vote overwhelmingly, has a democratic mandate to ascend to the presidency.
