Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado wins Nobel Peace Prize, sparking White House anger

London: Venezuelan campaigner Maria Corina Machado has won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work defying dictatorship in her home country, triggering angry criticism from allies of US President Donald Trump who believe he should have won because of his efforts to end the war in Gaza.

Trump has openly sought the prize this year and one of his top aides rebuked the Nobel Committee for its decision, but Machado responded by partly dedicating the award to the president for his support for democracy in her country.

Machado is in hiding in Venezuela after campaigning for free and fair elections for more than two decades, and she has refused to leave the country even as 8 million of her fellow citizens have fled autocratic rule.

Born in 1967, she trained in engineering and finance before entering politics in 2002, and she gained support as an opposition candidate for the presidency last year. The government barred her from running, and in August last year she went into hiding.

Nobel Committee chair Jorgen Watne Frydnes praised her as a woman who kept the “flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness” in her country and around the world.

“Maria Corina Machado is one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America,” he said.

“Ms Machado has been a key unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided, an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government.”

Machado was briefly detained by authorities in January, when she attended a rally calling for fair elections, but she managed to return to hiding and remains in touch with Edmundo Gonzalez, recognised by the US and other nations as the rightful winner of last year’s presidential election.

In a video released by the Nobel Committee that showed Machado being told of the award by phone, she struggled for some moments to find the words to respond to the news.

“Thank you so much. I hope you understand this is a movement, this is an achievement of a whole society. I am just one person,” she said.

“I certainly do not deserve this. Oh my god.”

Nobel Committee secretary Olav Njolstad replied: “I think both the movement and you deserve it.”

Asked on Thursday about his chances of winning the prize, Trump said he had ended eight wars including the conflict in Gaza but that he had not done so to win the award.

“They’ll have to do what they do. Whatever they do is fine,” he said of the Nobel Committee. “I know this: I didn’t do it for that, I did it because I saved a lot of lives.”

The White House rebuked the Nobel Committee after the award was revealed, saying Trump had made peace deals, ended wars and saved lives.

“He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,” said White House spokesman Steven Cheung, a long-time aide to the president.

“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”

Machado, however, thanked Trump for his support for democracy in Venezuela.

“We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy,” she wrote on X.

“I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!”

In choosing Machado, the Nobel Committee pushed back at Trump’s campaign for the prize but awarded the honour to a campaigner who shares Trump’s interest in replacing the autocrat who rules her country.

Machado became one of Venezuela’s most vocal opponents of Hugo Chavez during his presidency from 1999 until his death in 2013, and she kept this up when he was replaced by his vice president, Nicolas Maduro, who has ruled since 2013.

Democratic leaders including then-US president Joe Biden condemned Maduro as a dictator when he used violence and electoral fraud to shut down the national assembly and deny the outcome of last year’s election.

Trump has intensified pressure on Maduro in recent days after sending warships, a submarine and F-35 stealth fighters to stop drug shipments from Venezuela to the US.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described Maduro as a “fugitive from American justice” because US authorities want to bring him to trial. The US has placed a $US50 million reward on his head so he can face charges over narcotics trafficking.

The Nobel Committee made no comment about Trump but emphasised Machado’s work in defending the principles of popular rule and the acceptance of democratic outcomes even when citizens disagreed.

“At a time when democracy is under threat, it is more important than ever to defend this common ground,” it said.

In August, Trump made a surprise phone call to Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg, a former NATO secretary-general, and said he wanted the prize.

Critics have disputed his claims about ending eight wars, noting, for instance, that war continues between Congo and Rwanda despite his claims about peace. India does not accept that Trump ended its recent conflict with Pakistan. However, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev jointly endorsed Trump for the prize in August for his role in ending their conflict.

While the award is decided by an independent committee of five at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo, the members are elected by the Norwegian parliament and are connected by that process to the nation’s political leaders.

Frydnes, the current chair of the Nobel Committee, is a human rights advocate who has worked with Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) and other non-government groups.

Last year’s award went to Nihon Hidankyo, a group of survivors of the nuclear bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Previous recipients include Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian champion of equality and women’s rights and Ales Bialiatski, a human rights advocate from Belarus. In 2021, it went to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia.

Wealthy Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who funded the prize, stipulated in his will that it should go to the person “who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.

When a journalist asked Frydnes on Friday in Oslo about the lobbying for this year’s prize, the Nobel Committee chair said there had been many campaigns for the prize over its long history.

“We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what, for them, leads to peace,” he said.

“This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of Nobel laureates, and that room is filled with both courage and integrity.

“So we base our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.”

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