Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said  that the “hour of freedom” had arrived for her country after President Nicolas Maduro was captured by the US forces. “Venezuelans, the HOUR OF FREEDOM has arrived!” she posted.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Machado, who has been in hiding since Maduro’s disputed reelection in July 2024, said in a post on X that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, whom the opposition says won the vote, “must immediately assume his constitutional mandate” as president.

In the 2024 elections, Maduro was declared the winner by the National Electoral Council, which did not publish the exact tally from polling stations because of a cyberattack. The opposition denounced electoral fraud targeting its candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who had stepped in at the last minute to replace opposition leader Maria Corina Machado after she was ruled ineligible. 

Machado was last seen in public last month, when she emerged from 11 months in hiding and travelled to Norway, where she was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize.

Venezuela’s opposition, the United States and many other Western countries considered Maduro’s election wins in 2018 and 2024 to be fraudulent.

Although Trump did not immediately back Machado, he told Fox News, “Well, we have to look at it right now,” he said. “They have a vice president, as you know. I mean, I don’t know about what kind of an election that was, but, you know, the election of Maduro was a disgrace.”

Machado has been hailed for her fight for democracy but also criticised for aligning herself with Trump.

Gonzalez Urrutia wrote on X on Saturday that “these are decisive hours, know that we are ready for the great operation of the reconstruction of our nation.”