Venezuela's Machado wins Nobel Peace Prize

THE Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who dedicated the award to the Venezuelan people — and to US President Donald Trump.

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Machado, the democracy activist who fronted the campaign to end President Nicolas Maduro’s authoritarian rule in last year’s elections, has become a “unifying” figure in Venezuela, the jury said.

She has refused to leave despite threats against her life. She dedicated her award to the “suffering people of Venezuela” and, in a surprise move, to Trump, who had long coveted it, citing his “decisive support of our cause”.

“More than ever we count on President Trump,” she wrote on X, a month into a major US military buildup near Venezuela’s shores and a campaign of deadly strikes on suspected drug boats.

Machado, 58, told Nobel Institute director Kristian Berg Harpviken, who called her with news of her prize, that she was confident of a peaceful transition to democracy in Venezuela.

The trained engineer, in hiding for the past year, is “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times”, said Nobel Committee chairperson Jorgen Watne Frydnes.