Juan Andrés Mejía


Juan Andrés Mejía Szilard is a Venezuelan politician and engineer. He was elected deputy to the Venezuelan National Assembly on December 6, 2015 representing the second district of state of Miranda on behalf of the political organization Mesa de la Unidad Democrática. He is founding member and National Political Coordinator of the political party “Voluntad Popular”. He is President of the Special Commission “Plan País:File:///D:/perfiles/vp/Downloads/wiki english v1.2.docx#ftn3|" and presides over the Subcommittee of Credit and Public Debt to the National Assembly. On May 8, 2019 began a persecution against him by the regime of Nicolás Maduro when the Supreme Court of Justice requested to disqualify his parliamentary immunity to the National Constituent Assembly with an imminent risk of arrest.
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Education

He studied industrial engineering at the Simón Bolívar University, graduating in 2010. He completed a master's degree in public management at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración in 2012 and the following year, he received a scholarship to start a master's degree in public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. After two years of studies, he returned to the country to take a place in Venezuelan politics.

University Leadership

Juan Andrés was elected president of the Student Body of the Simón Bolívar University on two occasions. He was one of the main leaders of the Student Movement that emerged in the year 2007 after the closure of the television plant Radio Caracas Televisión, due to the expiration of the concession for its open broadcast signal.
In 2007, he participated actively in the electoral campaign for the "No" against the Constitutional Reform proposal promoted by President Hugo Chávez, with the objective of modify the Constitution of 1999. In the Constitutional Reform Referendum, the opposition conquered the victory with the result in favor of "No".

Political career

In 2009, he founded with Leopoldo López and other political leaders the Voluntad Popular party, as a new political force that would fight to change the course of the country in a plural and democratic way. Mejía was elected in 2011 by more than 16 thousand people, as a member of the national leadership of this organization.
On August 9, 2013, he was registered as a candidate for Councilman of the Baruta municipality on behalf of the political organization Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, but decided to retire shortly after, because he was awarded a scholarship to study a master's degree abroad. Juan Andrés has been promoter of different movements and organizations dedicated to community work in poor neighborhoods. He also served as National Coordinator of “Redes Populares”, the grassroots movement, in Voluntad Popular.

National Assembly

In June 2015, Freddy Guevara and Juan Andrés Mejía were announced as opposition candidates for the Miranda state for the parliamentary elections scheduled in December 2015. On August 7, 2015, they formalized their candidacy for electoral district N ° 2, formed by the municipalities Chacao, Baruta, El Hatillo and parish Leoncio Martínez of Sucre municipality.
On December 6, 2015, Guevara and Mejía were elected deputies to the National Assembly with 84.87%, becoming the most voted parliamentarians of the election, according to official data issued by the Consejo Nacional Electoral.

Subcommittee to attend the university sector

On January 14, 2016, the National Assembly approved the creation of a Special Commission to address abcrisis faced by Venezuelan universities. Deputy Mejia was part of this commission, which presented on May 5 a final report to address this situation. It recommended the Amendment to the Organic Law of Education and the Organic Law of Science, Technology and Innovation, as well as the creation of the new Law of Higher Education, and the Law of Student Welfare.

Subcommittee of Credit and Public Debt of the Permanent Commission of Finance and Economic Development of the National Assembly of Venezuela

Since January 2018, Mejía serves as President of the Subcommittee of Credit and Public Debt of the National Assembly. He has worked to gather information about the current state of the national public debt. In August 2018 the deputy alerted about the possible loss of the oil subsidiary Citgo due to mismanagement by Maduro of the country's public debts

Special Commission “Plan País”

On January 29, 2019, the National Assembly approved the creation of the Special Commission  "Plan País", in charge of the designing and promoting a Nation's Rescue Plan, a road map submitted by the opposition in December 2018. The commission was installed the day after its approval. Deputy Mejía presides this commission, alongside Deputy Jose Guerra who occupies the vice-presidency while deputies Mariela Magallanes, Elías Matta and Luis Silva are also members.
“Plan País”, accompanied by academics, experts and politicians, is a set of policies that the leadership will follow in a new government, arising from the construction of consensus among all sectors of the country. Among the priorities of this plan are: obtaining humanitarian aid and guaranteeing supplies, stabilizing the economy, reactivating the oil industry, diversifying the national economy and restoring access to public services.

Political persecution

In May 2019, a new wave of persecution against deputies of the National Assembly began with the issuance of five sentences of the Full Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice . On May 8, 2019 a request made by the Attorney General of the Republic to the National Constituent Assembly is published on the TSJ website, where it decides to compromise the responsibility of the deputies Juan Andrés Mejía, Sergio Vergara and Freddy Superlano of the Venezuelan parliament in the flagrant commission of crimes such as treason, conspiracy and civil rebellion, among others. On May 14, 2019 the ANC in ordinary session approved to disqualify the parliamentary immunity of five deputies of the National Parliament, including in the previous list deputies Carlos Paparoni and Miguel Pizarro in an illegal and unconstitutional way.
The actions taken by the Full Chamber of the TSJ violate the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela when requesting the lifting of parliamentary immunity to the ANC and not to the AN, who is the only competent authority in the matter, and also modifies the criterion of flagrancy to grant the acquiescence of their immunity without complying with the pre-merit pre-requisite requirement.
Deputy Juan Andrés Mejía is taking measures ever since, in order to protect his safety and avoid being a "hostage of the dictatorship".