Venezuelan politician insults presidents attending Nobel Prize ceremony

The general secretary of Venezuela's ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, on Monday called the presidents who have confirmed they will accompany opposition leader María Corina Machado to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway on December 10 "vagabonds." Last Thursday, Panama's President José Raúl Mulino announced he would travel to Norway to accompany Machado, and stated at a press conference that the former Venezuelan deputy had invited him to the ceremony. The committee emphasized that the leader has shown that the tools of democracy are also the tools of peace, adding that the awardee embodies the hope of a different future, where citizens' fundamental rights are protected and their voices are heard. Last October, Machado said she could only travel to Oslo to receive the Nobel Prize if Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro was no longer in power, according to statements to the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv, cited by the Norwegian news agency NTB, denouncing that "there are direct threats" to her life. Machado was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize "for her tireless work in promoting the democratic rights of the Venezuelan people and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy," announced on October 10 by the Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Committee. "Those presidents are a bunch of wimps, vagabonds, as if they had nothing to do in their countries... they are show-offs who don't miss an opportunity to travel anywhere," said the also Minister of Interior and Justice at the party's weekly press conference. Also, Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa informed on November 11 that he would travel to Norway after a "personal invitation" from the opposition leader. "But all that remains to be seen, that's really their problem, I hope they manage to get a plane ticket," Cabello said ironically. Cabello stated that the leaders, without making any special mention of anyone, do not travel through their countries "to demand respect."