María Corina Machado: Defending democracy in Venezuela
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 27 September 2024
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stephen Sackur speaks to the de-facto leader of the Venezuelan opposition, María Corina Machado. Two months after an election which she says delivered a humiliating defeat to the country's authoritarian leader President Nicolás Maduro, he’s clinging on to power and his regime is clamping down on dissent. Have hopes for change again been thwarted in Venezuela?
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. In the very act of speaking to me |
| 0:07.1 | in this interview recorded on the 26th of September, my guest today is taking a significant risk. |
| 0:14.6 | Maria Carina Machado is the de facto leader of the opposition toola Maduro's socialist government in Venezuela. |
| 0:23.4 | She masterminded the presidential election campaign fronted by her colleague Edmundo Gonzalez. |
| 0:29.1 | The result of that election in late July, according to voting data acquired by the opposition, |
| 0:36.1 | was a decisive win for Gonzalez. However, Maduro claimed victory. |
| 0:42.6 | The official results were never published and the Supreme Court in Caracas backed the authoritarian |
| 0:48.4 | president. In the weeks since then, the Maduro regime has ramped up its repression of dissent, and Edmundo |
| 0:56.7 | Gonzalez has fled the country for the sanctuary of Spain. A host of countries refused to recognize |
| 1:03.4 | Maduro's victory and called for a peaceful transition of power. That, though, seems unlikely. |
| 1:10.7 | Maduro still has the support of his armed forces |
| 1:13.5 | and security apparatus, and the backing of an international alliance of anti-Western nations, |
| 1:20.9 | featuring Russia and regional partners like Cuba. Ms. Machado, somewhat miraculously, |
| 1:26.7 | remains at liberty inside Venezuela, though she keeps her |
| 1:30.4 | whereabouts undisclosed. She says she has a robust strategy to ensure that change does come to her |
| 1:37.7 | country. But could that be wishful thinking? Well, she joins me now on a shaky line from inside Venezuela where she's currently |
| 1:47.2 | hiding. Maria Karina Machado, welcome to hard talk. Thank you very much, Steven. It's a pleasure to be |
| 1:53.0 | working. It's great to talk to you. It's two months now since Venezuelans voted in the presidential |
| 2:00.0 | election. Just tell me, what has happened to you |
| 2:03.3 | since that vote? Well, our victory by a landslide was something the regime did I expect, |
| 2:11.9 | as well as the fact that in less than 24 hours, we were able to collect, digitalize, and on a robust web page, |
| 2:22.2 | over 83% of the tally sheets, the official tally sheets that actually demonstrated our victory. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.