Norwegian lawmakers reacted with shock and dismay over Venezuela opposition leader María Corina Machado’s decision to present U.S. President Donald Trump with her Nobel Peace Prize medal.
“It’s completely unheard of,” Janne Haaland Matlary, a professor of international politics at the University of Oslo and former state secretary in the foreign affairs ministry, told public broadcaster NRK on Friday.
She called Machado’s gesture “disrespectful” and “pathetic,” saying it undermined the value of the prize, which the Norwegian Nobel Committee awards annually.
Raymond Johansen, a Norwegian lawmaker for the center-left Labour Party and former governing mayor of Oslo, said in a Facebook post it was “incredibly embarrassing and damaging to one of the world’s most respected and important prizes,” according to a Google translation.
Machado, who met Trump at the White House for the first time on Thursday, said the gift to the U.S. president was a “profound expression of gratitude for the invaluable support of President Trump and the United States to the Venezuelan people.” It comes after a U.S. military operation seized Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, on Jan. 3.
