Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado says she plans to return home “as soon as possible” as she tries to avoid being sidelined by the US following its seizure of dictator Nicolás Maduro.
In her first television interview since Saturday’s raid on Caracas she denounced Delcy Rodríguez, Mr Maduro’s deputy who has since promoted to interim president and identified by Washington as its point person for running the country, as having been “rejected by the Venezuelan people”.
Ms Machado described the new leader, a member of Chavismo’s inner circle for 20 years, as “one of the main architects of torture, persecution, corruption, narco-trafficking. She is the main ally and leans on Russia, China and Iran, certainly not an individual that could be trusted by international investors”.
She spoke as residents in Caracas reported security forces and regime-linked armed groups have ramped up patrols in the capital, stopping residents and checking their mobile phones for antigovernment content. Several journalists have also been detained since Saturday’s raid.
READ MORE
On Monday the government published the terms of a state of emergency which orders police to “immediately begin the national search and capture of everyone involved in the promotion or support for the armed attack by the United States”.
Ms Machado left hiding in Venezuela last month to travel to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
She was barred from running in 2024’s presidential election but her substitute Edmundo González is widely believed to have crushed Mr Maduro, taking around 70 per cent of the vote. The regime declared Mr Maduro the winner regardless.
But following Saturday’s capture of Mr Maduro, US president Donald Trump said Ms Machado lacks “respect” in Venezuela saying the US would now “rule” the country through the remaining Chavista regime and that US secretary of state Marco Rubio was already in contact with Ms Rodríguez.
Mr Rubio has said a period of stabilisation in Venezuela is necessary before a democratic transition can take place, saying immediate elections would be “premature”.
The Trump administration has said it does not recognise the Chavista regime as legitimate and will be using its economic blockade of the country to force it to carry out its demands. These include clamping down on drug trafficking and foreign armed groups operating on Venezuelan soil as well as opening up the country’s oil industry to US companies.
Explainer
Who is Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s ousted president?
In an address on Tuesday to Republican members of the lower house of congress a jubilant President Trump once again praised the “brilliant tactically” raid calling Mr Maduro “a violent guy and he’s killed millions of people”.
Mr Maduro and his wife were remanded into custody after pleading not guilty on drug and weapon charges during their arraignment hearing in New York on Monday.
It emerged on Tuesday that the US justice department has now dropped its claim that Mr Maduro was head of a drug cartel named the Cartel de los Soles.
Mr Trump and other members of his administration repeatedly identified Mr Maduro as head of the cartel which in November the US designated a foreign terrorist organisation. But crime experts in Latin America said the group – Cartel of the Suns in English – never formally existed as a properly structured organisation.
Instead it is just a general term, named after sun-shaped insignia worn by Venezuelan military officials, used for corrupt members of the Venezuelan military and other security forces who participate in cocaine trafficking.
