Machado Misses Ceremony Eve: Venezuela’s Prize Fallout?

A planned news conference by Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado was cancelled Tuesday after a several-hour delay, a day before the award ceremony in Oslo.

Barred from Running in Election

The 58-year-old’s win for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in her South American nation was announced on Oct. 10. She was described as a woman “who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”

Machado won the opposition’s primary election and intended to run against President Nicolás Maduro in last year’s presidential election, but the government barred her from running for office. Retired diplomat Edmundo González took her place.

The lead-up to the July 28, 2024, election saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations. That increased after the country’s National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, declared the incumbent the winner despite credible evidence to the contrary.

González sought asylum in Spain last year after a Venezuelan court issued a warrant for his arrest.

Machado went into hiding and has not been seen in public since Jan. 9, when she was briefly detained after joining supporters in a protest in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. The following day, Maduro was sworn in for a third six-year term.

Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at policy institute Chatham House, said the Nobel prize had given “a strong signal of international validation … [of] the democratic results that had been forgotten.”

Machado is due to receive the award at a ceremony at Oslo City Hall in the presence of King Harald, Queen Sonja and Latin American leaders including Argentine President Javier Milei and Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa.

The ceremony starts at 1 p.m. local time (7 a.m. ET).

Should Machado not make it to Oslo, the ceremony would still go ahead. When a laureate is unable to attend, a close family member usually steps in to receive the prize and deliver the Nobel lecture in place of the laureate.