Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is calling for elections next year after returning to Caracas, where she held a news conference on Thursday, the BBC reports.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner said the country’s move toward democracy was “irreversible” and thanked the Trump administration for opening the “floodgate to freedom” by capturing former president Nicolás Maduro. The same day, interim president Delcy Rodríguez said elections would be held and that her government should oversee a “transition of this magnitude” — which Machado dismissed as illogical. Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice-president, set no voting date.

Machado said there would be elections in 2027 but offered no exact timeline. The transition would be “irreversible, organised, pacific,” she said, standing before a “Let Us Be Free” slogan. Her return follows failed earlier attempts to re-enter; last year she left Venezuela by speedboat at night for Norway to accept the Nobel; soon after, in January, the US seized Maduro.

The Trump administration then backed Rodríguez as leader; she was sworn in as interim president and later signed an oil deal with favourable terms for the US. Machado has previously said she would run for president again if an election were held; her ability to return depended on Trump administration approval.

On her return she said she heard one word from the thousands of supporters along the route into the capital: freedom. “I come to carry out a task and complete a mandate.” She had received no message or invitation to meet from Rodríguez and would not personally join election talks between opposition representatives and the government, but wished them well in reforming the electoral body so every Venezuelan, at home or abroad, could vote.

Shortly before Machado’s conference, Rodríguez spoke in a conciliatory tone, saying she had instructed security agencies that no one be detained without a judicial order except in flagrant crimes, and that Venezuela’s doors were open to returning exiles, with dialogue and consensus.

Source: Venezuela opposition leader María Machado calls for elections upon return | BBC