On 7 January 2019, the Armed Forces of Gabon announced a coup d'état in Gabon. Military officers claimed that they had removed President Ali Bongo. Bongo became president in 2016 after a disputed election and protests.
Ali Bongo was receiving medical treatment in Morocco. While he was there, armed rebels in the capital city Libreville acted. They took hostages. They said that they had created a "National Restoration Council" to "restore democracy in Gabon."
During this time, the Internet was sometimes not available. It is unknown if the Internet was shut down by the rebels themselves or by civilians. Gabon's government later said that it had gotten control again.
Juan Guaidó
Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez (born 28 July 1983) is a Venezuelan engineer and politician. He is the President of the National Assembly of Venezuela and was a member of the Popular Will political party. He is a representative for the state of Vargas.
The Constitution of Venezuela lets the President of the National Assembly hold the role of Interim President of Venezuela if nobody else can have it. Guaidó took oath on 23 January 2019 to be interim president, because people rejected Nicolás Maduro as the president. Many countries recognize Guaidó as president, but others don't.
Guaidó grew up with a large family, who were middle-class but humble. His parents were an airline pilot and a teacher. One of his grandfathers was a sergeant of the Venezuelan National Guard, the other grandfather was a captain in the Venezuelan Navy.
He survived the 1999 Vargas tragedy which left his family temporarily homeless. He earned his high school diploma in 2000. The tragedy may have influenced his political views, he did not think that Hugo Chávez's government helped his family afterwards.
Guaidó has an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering. He was awarded this in 2007 at Andrés Bello Catholic University. He has two postgraduate degrees related to business, one from George Washington University in the United States, and the other from the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración in Caracas.
He is married to Fabiana Rosales, a journalist, and they have a daughter named Miranda.
Guaidó was part of a student-led political movement that was set up to protest about an independent television network RCTV not being able to operate any more due to the government. He helped set up the movement when he was 23. This was also the year he graduated from Andrés Bello. The group protested other government acts, including the 2007 constitutional referendum, which Chávez lost.
Two years later, in 2009, Guaidó helped set up a political party, the Popular Will party. He is a member of this party. In 2014, he was the party's national coordinator. CNN says that he was "mentored for years" by Leopoldo López, a more famous member of Popular Will. Guaidó and López talk to each other a lot, even though López cannot leave his house. Guaidó was well known to other people in Popular Will, but was not famous to other people until 2019, when López said he should be leader of Popular Will.
In the 2010 Venezuelan parliamentary election, Guaidó was elected as a back-up representative. In 2015 he was elected to be the main representative, with 26% of the vote. He represents an area that used to not support his party.
Even though he wasn't very famous, Guaidó stopped eating as a protest so that there would be elections in 2015. In 2017 he took an important communications job in the National Assembly. In 2018, he became the person in charge of the National Assembly, because he was named the head of the biggest alliance in the National Assembly. He helped out by telling stories to people at the University of Arizona, who were looking at the conditions of politicians in Latin America.
In the National Assembly, Guaidó looked into the staff of Maduro being corrupt, and worked with outside people to take back money that had been stolen from the Venezuelan public. He took part in the 2017 Venezuelan protests. He has a scar on his neck after he was shot with rubber bullets.
Guaidó was elected President of the National Assembly of Venezuela in December 2018. He was sworn in on 5 January 2019. Relatives of other politicians who have been locked up were invited to the inauguration, where they stood on the balcony behind the banner of Juan Requesens. Guaidó is the youngest person to lead the opposition. When he was officially in the job, he said he would stand up to Nicolás Maduro, and gave an eight-point action plan to do that. The plan, which the National Assembly agrees with, has three phases and eight key points:
On 15 January 2019, the National Assembly made a plan to work with other countries. They asked these other countries to not let Maduro access his money or money that belongs to Venezuela. Guaidó wrote an article on 15 January 2019 in "The Washington Post". In his article he told people about the problems in Venezuela and how he can fix it. Guaidó spoke to the "Wall Street Journal" about his methods to lead people, where he says people should be "holding out a hand". He said that he would not lock up members of the army who stopped helping Maduro and helped him instead. Other country leaders nearby to Venezuela asked Maduro to not become president again in 2019, wanting a better election.
Guaidó was taken to prison for 45 minutes on 13 January 2019 by the Venezuelan secret police. The Lima Group and the person in charge of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, said that Guaidó being arrested was wrong. Maduro said the people who locked him up had not been told to do that by anyone official. Twelve of the people who did it were arrested for disobeying orders.
Guaidó said that the soldiers disobeying showed that Maduro was not in control.
Article 233 of the Constitution of Venezuela says that there are situations when the president of the National Assembly can take the job of president of Venezuela, if there is no other president. Lots of people thought that Maduro had not been elected in a way that paid attention to other rules in the Constitution, and so Guaidó could become the president. Guaidó agreed on 10 January 2019 and said that he would try to become president. The National Assembly asked for people to protest on 23 January. This is an important day in Venezuela, because it is on this day that they got rid of an old president who was a dictator. Lots of people all over the world protested on the day. Guaidó said that he was president. Maduro was not happy about this, blaming it on the United States (U.S.). Maduro said he would not deal with the U.S. The U.S., Canada, and several Latin American countries gave their support to Guaidó to be interim president on the same day; Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba and Turkey supported Maduro. On 29 January, the TSJ began investigating Guaidó, stopping him from having his money or leaving the country.
The day after becoming the interim president, Guaidó asked for help for the people of Venezuela. The U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave him $20 million.
On 25 January, Guaidó made an Amnesty Law, which the National Assembly agreed with. It would help the National Assembly by supporting military personnel and authorities who help him.
He suggested that if Maduro gives up power, he may receive amnesty. In his first weekend as interim president, he held another public assembly, asking supporters to spread the word of the Amnesty Law throughout the country to military, police and other people it may affect.
Guaidó asked the Bank of England and British Prime Minister Theresa May to not give Maduro any of £1.2 billion of gold that belongs to Venezuela. He asked for them to give access to the gold to the opposition instead. In the same week, the US Treasury made sanctions to prevent US purchases from PDVSA (Venezuela's state-run oil company), and gave Guaidó control of some Venezuelan things in the country.