{"text":[[{"start":9.56,"text":"Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel laureate María Corina Machado said the Trump administration had opened the “floodgates to freedom” as she held her first press conference since returning to Venezuela on Sunday."}],[{"start":21.68,"text":"“I want to thank [Donald] Trump and [secretary of state Marco] Rubio for their courage,” Machado told a crowd of supporters and journalists at a university in Caracas, the capital. Referring to the arrest of her country’s autocratic leader Nicolás Maduro, she said: “Thanks to January 3, the floodgates to freedom have opened.”"}],[{"start":40.72,"text":"The remark underlined how much of Venezuela’s future now rests with Washington, which in January backed Maduro’s deputy Delcy Rodríguez to take over leadership rather than Machado, who consistently polls as the country’s most popular politician."}],[{"start":54.52,"text":"Earlier this week a senior US state department official set out how Washington envisaged an election process in Venezuela. No polls have taken place since a vote two years ago in which Maduro claimed victory, an outcome that was widely denounced internationally as fraudulent."}],[{"start":71.551,"text":"The US official said a new supreme court should be in place by mid-December, with an overhauled electoral authority following “very shortly thereafter”. Rodríguez would then declare the presidency permanently vacant, triggering elections within six months."}],[{"start":85.12,"text":"“That infrastructure needs to be ripped out and replaced with something new,” the official said. “You can’t have credible elections in that country without that in place.”"}],[{"start":94.6,"text":"Machado returned to Venezuela on Sunday, appearing at a mass in the western state of Lara before travelling by road to Caracas, where thousands took to the streets to welcome her after nearly 10 months in exile after leaving to collect her Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo."}],[{"start":109.4,"text":"“I want to thank everyone who helped me return,” Machado said to a packed auditorium at a university in Caracas, without giving details of her journey. “I’ve come back to get society mobilised, to rally grassroots networks, and to bring every sector on board with this new vision for the country and this new republic.”"}],[{"start":126.08,"text":"Since January, Rodríguez has opened up Venezuela’s resources sector to US investment, including signing an unusual deal that gives the Pentagon a 35 per cent stake in a company that controls a substantial portion of Venezuela’s oil reserves."}],[{"start":140.48,"text":"Rodríguez said in a televised address on Thursday, just before Machado was due to speak, that a political “transformation of this magnitude” should be carried out by “someone with experience and a real ability to carry it out”."}],[{"start":152.68,"text":"“I come from the system we are transforming and changing,” Rodríguez said."}],[{"start":158.16,"text":"Before fleeing the country, Machado had been living in hiding in Venezuela from August 2024, when Maduro cracked down on dissent in the wake of his disputed re-election."}],[{"start":167.08,"text":"Machado, who was banned from running for president, oversaw an independently verified tally of votes that showed her stand-in, Edmundo González, defeating Maduro by a margin of two to one."}],[{"start":178.44,"text":"On Thursday, Machado thanked the government of Panama, where she had been based before returning to Venezuela, for “safeguarding the tally sheets that we will soon bring home”."}],[{"start":187.4,"text":"Óscar Murillo, who heads local rights watchdog Provea, said that given Machado’s standing in Venezuela, she should be vital to Washington’s plan for a political transition there."}],[{"start":196.98,"text":"Murillo said: “Machado had to weigh the importance of returning to the country to strengthen the ties that underpin her political credibility, rather than staying abroad, on the sidelines, while friction grew with the actor she has always considered an ally.”"}],[{"start":215.99,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1793326829_5794.mp3"}