Panama City: Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Maria Corina Machado announced on Saturday that she plans to run for president again and intends to return to her country before the end of 2026.Machado’s comments, while meeting in Panama with several fellow Venezuelan opposition leaders, come more than four months after the White House made a surprise decision to sideline then-President Nicolas Maduro after his capture by US forces and instead work with loyalists to Venezuela’s ruling party.Machado has been in exile since December, when she emerged from hiding somewhere in Venezuela for 11 months and traveled to Norway, where she was awarded the Nobel Prize.He told reporters in Panama City that he and other gathered opposition leaders were “committed to a democratic transition through free and fair presidential elections, where all Venezuelans inside and outside the country vote.”Still, it is unclear when presidential elections will be held in Venezuela.US President Donald Trump and senior administration officials have praised Maduro’s successor, Acting President Delsey Rodriguez, who has opened Venezuela’s oil industry to US investment at a time of rising oil prices due to the war in Iran.The Trump administration has also slowed discussion of elections, which are required by Venezuela’s constitution to be held within 30 days if the president becomes “permanently unavailable.”Machado said it would take seven to nine months of planning to hold elections under democratic conditions. Necessary changes include the appointment of neutral election officials, voting registration updates, and the ability for opposition candidates to contest elections without government interference.Machado became Maduro’s strongest rival in recent years, but his government barred him from running for office in the 2024 presidential election, forcing him to choose retired ambassador Edmundo González Urrutia to represent him on the ballot.Officials loyal to the ruling party declared Maduro the winner just hours after voting closed, but Machado’s well-organized campaign gathered evidence that Gonzalez had defeated Maduro by a more than 2-to-1 margin.On Saturday, Machado told reporters that she would run against any other presidential candidate in an “impeccable election”.“I will be a candidate, but of course there may be others,” she said. “I would love to compete with everyone, with anyone who wants to be a candidate.”