The Nobel Peace Prize means a lot to Maria Corina Machado but, clearly, giving it away means even more.
If giving Donald Trump an 18-carat medal is the cost of regime change in Venezuela, it’s a price she is prepared to pay.
Stolen valour? She cares less.
The bigger prize is democracy in her homeland or, as she coined it, freedom over tyranny.
She told me that’s how she framed it for the US president on her visit to Washington DC, in her effort to engineer change in Venezuela.
She sees Donald Trump as a means to that end, even if he doesn’t see her in his plans.
As the pair had lunch in the White House, elsewhere in the building Trump’s press secretary reaffirmed his reluctance to embrace her as a figure to take the country forward.
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Machado was on the charm offensive, clearly. Her difficulty is in the appeal of rump dictatorship post-Maduro.
A “terrific woman” is how Trump described Delcy Rodriguez, the Maduro deputy now acting up.
His calculation is that the existing political infrastructure in Venezuela aids his access to oil reserves.
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To shake the tree could stir an uncertainty to compromise his ambitions, not least by provoking the country’s military and security services.
Machado needs to trust in the Trump administration’s talk of “transition” in Venezuela, even if they haven’t given a time-frame for it. She needs to hope the president will engage in the business of reform beyond the business of oil and that he will help to deliver free and fair elections.
Machado can present a strong case, not least by citing her movement’s election victory last year, only to have it annulled by Nicolas Maduro.
Her appeal was reinforced by the scenes in Washington DC. Following a meeting with Senators on Capitol Hill, she was mobbed by Venezuelan exiles who waved flags and chanted her name. Machado looked, every inch, the leader that Donald Trump doesn’t think she is – on appeal and command of her audience.
It was a successful trip as far as it went. If she can take it the distance, she deserves a medal.
