Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has returned to her country and called for free elections, declaring that a political transition would be "irreversible, organised, pacific."
Her return came after repeated earlier attempts to re-enter Venezuela had failed. She addressed thousands of supporters who lined her route into the capital, telling them she had heard one word repeated throughout: freedom.
"I come to carry out a task and complete a mandate," she said.
Machado said elections would take place in 2027 but did not offer an exact timeline. She spoke before a banner bearing the slogan "Let Us Be Free."
She said she had not received a message or invitation to meet from interim president Delcy Rodríguez, and would not personally participate in election negotiations between opposition representatives and the government. She said she wished negotiators well in their work, with the goal of seeing the electoral body reformed so that every Venezuelan, inside the country and abroad, could vote.
Although it remains unclear what Machado plans to do next, she has previously said she would run for president again if an election were held. Her ability to return to Venezuela was contingent on approval from the Trump administration.
Machado had left Venezuela last year by speedboat, travelling under cover of darkness to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Shortly after, in January, the United States seized former president Nicolás Maduro. The Trump administration subsequently backed Rodríguez as leader. She was sworn in as interim president and later signed an oil deal granting favourable terms to the United States.
Shortly before Machado's news conference, Rodríguez delivered a speech in a conciliatory tone, saying she had "instructed the security agencies that no one be detained without judicial order, except in cases of flagrant commission of crimes."
Rodríguez also spoke of "the doors being open" in Venezuela to returning exiles and referred to dialogue and the building of national consensus.
