Juan Guaido: The 'kid' Taking On Venezuela's Maduro

Juan Guaido survived one of Venezuela's worst natural disasters as a teenager -- the Vargas tragedy -- back when the enigmatic late leader Hugo Chavez was cementing his socialist revolution

Caracas, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Jan, 2019 ) :Juan Guaido survived one of Venezuela's worst natural disasters as a teenager -- the Vargas tragedy -- back when the enigmatic late leader Hugo Chavez was cementing his socialist revolution.

Now president of the National Assembly and unexpected opposition leader, Guaido is the best hope to dislodge President Nicolas Maduro.

The president, a former bus driver and Chavez's hand-picked successor, calls Guaido "a kid playing at politics" but his biggest domestic detractor is a 35-year-old industrial engineer who showed no fear in branding Maduro a "usurper" over his controversial re-election in May.

Those snap elections were boycotted by the opposition and rejected by the United States, European Union and a dozen Latin American countries.

Maduro has a point about Guaido, who on January 5 became parliament's youngest ever president.

He has never been a great orator but now he is at the head of a divided and disorganized opposition, many of whose most prominent leaders are either in exile, prison or disqualified.

What he has managed to achieve already, though, is to get parliament's opposition majority to officially declare Maduro a usurper and denounce his re-election as a fraud, while promising an "amnesty" for all military and government officials that disavow the president.