Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado estimated that Venezuela could hold new democratic elections in less than a year. However, she stressed that she had not spoken to US President Donald Trump about the issue, Politico reports.
"We believe that the real process of moving to manual voting could take place in nine to 10 months. Everything depends on when this process starts, she explained.
Machado's comment comes at a time when leaders of both parties in Congress are calling on the president to speed up the process of relinquishing US control over Venezuela following the capture of Nicolas Maduro. Trump said the United States could continue to monitor Venezuela for years to closely monitor the development of infrastructure to extract oil from the country's vast oil fields. He said only time would tell how long the United States would exercise oversight over the South American country.
Machado, who met with Trump at the White House after Maduro's capture, said the two did not discuss her expected run for re-election during their meeting. But she explained her optimism about the relatively short window for holding democratic elections in the country, compared to similar American nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush administration, which took years to fully establish.
"In our case, look, we have a democratic culture, a strong democratic culture. We have an organized society. We have a legitimate leadership with enormous popular support and our armed forces are also supporting the transition to democracy," she noted. She said Venezuela's recent elections were held "under very difficult circumstances."
Venezuela held presidential elections in 2024, which Nicolás Maduro claimed victory, and parliamentary elections in 2025. Independent observers criticized the elections as unfree and unfair. "If we were able to do this under such extreme conditions, imagine now that we have the support of the United States government, when people feel that we are not alone," Machado said.