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Nobel Peace Prize 2025: María Corina Machado

(www.nobelprize.org)
522 points pykello | 3 comments | 10 Oct 25 09:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.694s | source
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weli ◴[10 Oct 25 09:21 UTC] No.45536827[source]▶
Don't get me wrong. She has firmly opposed maduro and is a beacon of hope for many in Venezuela but she hasn't accomplished anything meaningful yet? She is just a career politician that just happens to be in the opposition of the venezuelan goverment when Maduro (a dictator) is in power. But she hasn't done anything extraordinary to merit the award.
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mananoreboton ◴[10 Oct 25 09:49 UTC] No.45537006[source]▶
Don't get me wrong, but perhaps what was missing was greater media coverage and genuine interest in Venezuela's situation. María Corina Machado orchestrated a HUGE covert months long operation to collect tally sheets from the overwhelming majority of voting machines during the 2024 presidential election. Her team trained poll watchers to demand vote receipts (as legally permitted) then capture and transmit that data through various channels, even from the most remote regions of the country. There are documented cases of people—poll workers and participants in the plan—being imprisoned or even killed for their involvement. Thanks to this operation, the website resultadospresidencialesvenezuela2024.com exists, where venezuelan can verify the actual vote count per candidate, backed by fingerprint records and the serial numbers of both the software and hardware used. These verified results confirm that Edmundo González was the true winner of the election. The data provides undeniable evidence that Nicolás Maduro installed himself as a dictator, with the full support of the national electoral authority, which, to this day, has refused to release the official election results (a procedure that has historically been routine).

You can also verify the results here https://macedoniadelnorte.com/ (a whole story behind this hostname). Again, only possible by the María Corina's huge effort

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thisislife2 ◴[10 Oct 25 11:29 UTC] No.45537654[source]▶
Sounds right from the playbook of the superpowers, when an oil rich country has a government that doesn't allow them to profit from their oil resources - (1) demonize the current leader and government, (2) Give international publicity and recognition to a politician ideologically friendly to them (3) Destabilise the unfriendly government by launching an internal / external war against them (4) Install the friendly puppet politician as the leader of the country (while shouting "democracy has won", if you are western superpower) (5) Profit!
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ch4s3 ◴[10 Oct 25 11:36 UTC] No.45537716[source]▶
This comment reads as deeply ignorant and callous toward the treatment of the Venezuelan people by their government. Fully 1/3 of Venezuelans have fled the country due to repression and economic decline due to Maduro’s mismanagement. As someone who reads Spanish I can tell you the the media in non US aligned Latin American countries is regularly reporting on the dictatorship in Venezuela.

Not everything is about oils or some conspiracy of western governments.

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1. ErneX ◴[10 Oct 25 11:53 UTC] No.45537873[source]▶
And what’s funny is that I’m even willing to trade oil deals if someone gets rid of the murderer kleptocracy that stole Venezuela from us. So yeah let’s do some oil deals if you help us get back to democracy.
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2. js8 ◴[10 Oct 25 14:04 UTC] No.45539224[source]▶
Will you still have democracy once Corina Machado realizes her plan to privatize oil companies?

I have little doubt she did a lot of good practical work for Venezuelan democracy (to expose Maduro's government). But her ideology - accept foreign invasion (which will inevitably kill innocent venezuelans) and privatizing oil reserves (which will inevitably result in undemocratic fallout of the profits) - is unfortunately not that of peace and democracy.

I wish she would more look at Norway as an example, which is a rare case of oil profits being shared collectively and democratically.

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3. ErneX ◴[10 Oct 25 15:42 UTC] No.45540235[source]▶
I’m not advocating for an invasion don’t get me wrong.

Venezuela had the biggest oil earnings of its history during the early Chavez years and all that money was pilfered. The oil industry infrastructure, the electric infrastructure is currently in shambles due to lack of investment, maintenance and corruption. Part of the recovery of Venezuela will require external investments just to get production back to the levels we had before this calamity.

They also took massive loans in exchange for future oil at insane prices, when people argues that we are going to lose our oil if X or Y happens to me it doesn’t mean anything, because we already lost it with these inept criminals in the government anyway.

Edit: even Maduro is now offering our country’s riches to the US in exchange for remaining in power:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/americas/maduro-ven...