François Bozizé

François Bozizé Yangouvonda (born 14 October 1946) is a Central African politician who was President of the Central African Republic from 2003 to 2013.

He was also the only Central African president born in modern-day Gabon.

He became a second lieutenant in 1969 and a captain in 1975.

Bozizé rose to become a high-ranking army officer in the 1970s, under the rule of Jean-Bédel Bokassa.

He was appointed Brigadier General by the Emperor of Central Africa Bokassa I (Jean-Bédel Bokassa) in 1978, after he beat a French noncommissioned officer who had been disrespectful to the Emperor.

With General Josyhat Mayomokala, Bozizé ordered military personnel to attack young demonstrators who were asking for their parents' arrears.

After Bokassa was ousted, Bozizé served in the government as Minister of Defense from 1979 to 1981 and as Minister of Information from 1981 to 1982.

After Bokassa was ousted by David Dacko in 1979, Bozizé was appointed Minister of Defense after an operation that the French army used to overthrow Bokassa (Operation Barracuda).

Under pressure to democratize the government during the 1980s, Kolingba had formed a political party and held a referendum, in which he was elected to a six-year term in office as president.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, internal and external pressures eventually forced Kolingba to adopt the beginnings of a democratic approach.

He participated in a failed 1982 coup attempt against President André Kolingba and subsequently fled the country.

Following Dacko's ouster by André Kolingba in September 1981, Bozizé was appointed Minister of Information, but fled to the north of the country with 100 soldiers after his involvement in a failed coup attempt led by Ange-Félix Patassé on 3 March 1982, in which he accused Kolingba of treason and proclaimed the change of power on Radio Bangui.

He then obtained refuge in France.

Bozizé was arrested in Cotonou, Benin in July 1989, and imprisoned and tortured.

He was put on trial by Kolingba on charges of helping the coup d'état in May but was acquitted on 24 September 1991 and released from prison on 1 December.

He then sought refuge in France, where he remained for nearly two years.

In March 1991, he named Édouard Frank Prime Minister but allowed him virtually no power.

He also established a commission to revise the constitution in order to promote pluralism.

As a result, the donor community severely restricted aid flows pending movement towards democracy putting the country into a vicious cycle in which it could not obtain the resources to pay for an election which would legitimize it sufficiently to obtain a flow of aid.

When he was pressured by the international community, via a group of locally represented international donors called GIBAFOR (France, USA, Germany, Japan, EU, World Bank and UN), including a very vocal and eloquent US ambassador to the Central African Republic, Daniel H. Simpson, to hold fair elections.

They were assisted by the UN Electoral Assistance Unit and monitored by international observers in 1992 but a lot of the resources came from France.

Kolingba had the 1992 election sabotaged as he discovered he was not expected to win the vote and so declared the election invalid getting the Constitutional Council cancel it.

Under continued pressure from the donor group the election was rescheduled for September 1993.

In the 1993 election, Bozizé ran for the presidency as an independent, receiving 12,159 votes, 1.5% of the total votes cast.

Patassé, Abel Goumba and Kolingba received 37.32%, 21.68% and 12.10% of the vote, respectively, but since none of the candidates obtained a majority, a run-off election between the top two candidates — Patassé and Goumba — was held.

Patassé defeated Goumba by a 53.49%–46.51% vote and was elected president of the Central African Republic.

For many years Bozizé was considered a supporter of Patassé and helped him suppress army mutinies in 1996 and 1997.

Bozizé was named the Armed Forces Chief of Staff.

Bozizé showed no activity against Patassé and frequently crushed revolts against the president.

Years later, he served as Army Chief of Staff under President Ange-Félix Patassé, but began a rebellion against Patassé in 2001.

On 28 May 2001, a coup was attempted against Patassé and defeated with the help of Libyan troops and Congolese rebels of the Movement for the Liberation of Congo.

Afterwards, Bozizé's loyalty was questioned, and in late October 2001 he was dismissed as Army Chief of Staff.

Fighting erupted when the government tried to arrest Bozizé on 3 November; after five days of this, government forces aided by Libyan troops captured the barracks where Bozizé was based, and Bozizé fled north to Chad.

Bozizé's forces captured the capital, Bangui, in March 2003, while Patassé was outside the country, and Bozizé took power, ushering in a transitional period of government.

He won the March–May 2005 presidential election in a second round of voting, and was re-elected in the January 2011 presidential election, winning the vote in the first round.

In December 2012, the CAR was plunged into an uprising by rebel forces who condemned the Bozizé government for not honoring peace agreements after the Central African Republic Bush War in 2007.

On 24 March 2013, Bozizé fled to Cameroon via the Democratic Republic of the Congo after the rebel forces attacked Bangui and took control of the presidential palace.

There, he was housed by Paul Biya, president of Cameroon.

On 29 May 2013, an international arrest warrant was issued against Bozizé by the Central African Republic.

Bozizé was born in the present-day nation of Gabon, a member of the Gbaya people, and attended a military officers' training college in the Central African province of Bouar.