Four Florida university presidents will nominate Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for avoiding violent protests, even though Nicolás Maduro’s government has not recognized the victory claimed by the opposition in the July 28 presidential election.
Miami Dade College (MDC) President Madeline Pumariega and Florida International University (FIU) President Kenneth A. Jessel, Saint Thomas University President David Armstrong, and Barry University President Mike Allen will nominate the Venezuelan opposition leader for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The announcement was made this Friday at a press conference at the Museum of the Cuban Diaspora in Miami.
“I don’t know of any world-class figure who has the qualities of María Corina Machado, who has always energetically promoted this civic process to be peaceful, never violent,” Marcell Felipe, the museum’s president, told EFE.
This is the first group of academic leaders who will promote the nomination of Corina Machado, but Felipe is confident that former heads of state, presidents of governments and national legislatures, Nobel Peace Prize winners and other academic leaders will join this campaign.
Felipe stressed that María Corina Machado is an “example for the entire world of how to lead a peace movement to demand change,” despite the series of “traps” and “fraud” perpetrated in the elections of July 28, in which the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared the current president, Nicolás Maduro, the winner.
Although Corina Machado had the “legitimate right” to use force to enforce the election results, the opposition leader “has never sought confrontation between Venezuelans, but rather resorted to peaceful means to give all power to the citizens,” Felipe said.
The director of the US Con Venezuela Command, María Teresa Morín, said with great emotion and a broken voice that this initiative is “already in itself an award for all Venezuelans and for this struggle that has cost so much.”
“Today is one of the most important days in the history of this struggle, a cause of great joy for the entire region for the struggle that María Corina Machado undertook more than 25 years ago of sacrifice and dedication of her life to a cause such as peace in Venezuela,” said Morín at the press conference.
Felipe explained that the nomination will officially take place on September 1, with the start of the process of presenting candidates, and will end in January 2025.
The Nobel Committee begins selecting nominees in February and, after drawing up a short list, the winner is chosen at the end of the year.
“It is very important to know this, because the Venezuelan regime will try to spread misinformation and say that the Nobel Prize was given to someone else,” since the award given this year corresponds to the 2024 nominees.
Venezuelans in more than a hundred cities around the world will join the protest this Saturday called by the majority opposition to defend the victory at the polls that, they claim, was obtained by Edmundo González Urrutia.
Miami / EFE
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2024-08-19 02:14:34
