How Libyan Democracy puts Western Democracy to shame

Because of the deliberately dishonest and even vile portrayals of the leader in the controlled media, not much is known regarding Qaddafi's political thoughts and his guiding ideology. He is described in the media as a dictator, yet in 'The Green Book', Qaddafi outlines the actual governing foundation that undergirds the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. That foundation is The Third Universal Theory 'which upon critical analysis' puts many so-called Western Democracies and Republics to shame......... Qaddafi says political decisions in which one candidate is granted victory, simply because they obtained the highest percentage of the vote by the electorate effectively establishes a dictatorship in the seat of power garbed in the guise of democracy. Especially when three or four losing candidates, whose votes combined would equal a higher total than the perceived winning candidate, split the vote.He then takes on the parliamentary governmental structure. The mere existence of such, Qaddafi says, underlies the absence of the people, for democracy can only exist with the presence of the people, and not in the presence of representatives of the people. Parliaments have become a legal barrier between people and their right to exercise authority. They exclude the masses in order to prevent them from practicing politics, and monopolize the control of politics in their name.

The remaking of Libyan society that Qadhafi envisioned and to which he devoted his energies after the early 1970s formally began in 1973 with a so-called cultural or popular revolution. The revolution was designed to combat bureaucratic inefficiency, lack of public interest and participation in the subnational governmental system, and problems of national political coordination. In an attempt to instill revolutionary fervor into his compatriots and to involve large numbers of them in political affairs, Qadhafi urged them to challenge traditional authority and to take over and run government organs themselves. The instrument for doing this was the "people's committee." Within a few months, such committees were found all across Libya. They were functionally and geographically based and eventually became responsible for local and regional administration.

People's committees were established in such widely divergent organizations as universities, private business firms, government bureaucracies, and the broadcast media. Geographically based committees were formed at the governorate, municipal, and zone (lowest) levels. Seats on the people's committees at the zone level were filled by direct popular election; members so elected could then be selected for service at higher levels. By mid-1973 estimates of the number of people's committees ranged above 2,000. In the scope of their administrative and regulatory tasks and the method of their members' selection, the people's committees embodied the concept of direct democracy that Qadhafi propounded in the first volume of The Green Book, which appeared in 1976. The same concept lay behind proposals to create a new political structure composed of "people's congresses." The centerpiece of the new system was the General People's Congress (GPC), a national representative body intended to replace the RCC.

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The new political order took shape in March 1977 when the GPC, at Qadhafi's behest, adopted the "Declaration of the Establishment of the People's Authority" and proclaimed the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. The term jamahiriya is difficult to translate, but American scholar Lisa Anderson has suggested "peopledom" or "state of the masses" as a reasonable approximation of Qadhafi's concept that the people should govern themselves free of any constraints, especially those of the modern bureaucratic state. The GPC also adopted resolutions designating Qadhafi as its general secretary and creating the General Secretariat of the GPC, comprising the remaining members of the defunct RCC. It also appointed the General People's Committee, which replaced the Council of Ministers, its members now called secretaries rather than ministers.

All legislative and executive authority was vested in the GPC. This body, however, delegated most of its important authority to its general secretary and General Secretariat and to the General People's Committee. Qadhafi, as general secretary of the GPC, remained the primary decision maker, just as he had been when chairman of the RCC. In turn, all adults had the right and duty to participate in the deliberation of their local Basic People's Congress (BPC), whose decisions were passed up to the GPC for consideration and implementation as national policy. The BPCs were in theory the repository of ultimate political authority and decision making, being the embodiment of what Qadhafi termed direct "people's power." The 1977 declaration and its accompanying resolutions amounted to a fundamental revision of the 1969 constitutional proclamation, especially with respect to the structure and organization of the government at both national and subnational levels.

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Continuing to revamp Libya's political and administrative structure, Qadhafi introduced yet another element into the body politic. Beginning in 1977, "revolutionary committees" were organized and assigned the task of "absolute revolutionary supervision of people's power"; that is, they were to guide the people's committees, raise the general level of political consciousness and devotion to revolutionary ideals, and guard against deviation and opposition in the BPCs. Filled with politically astute zealots, the ubiquitous revolutionary committees in 1979 assumed control of BPC elections. Although they were not official government organs, the revolutionary committees became another mainstay of the domestic political scene. As with the people's committees and other administrative innovations since the revolution, the revolutionary committees fit the pattern of imposing a new element on the existing subnational system of government rather than eliminating or consolidating already existing structures. By the late 1970s, the result was an unnecessarily complex system of overlapping jurisdictions in which cooperation and coordination among different elements were compromised by ill-defined grants of authority and responsibility.

The changes in Libyan leadership since 1976 culminated in March 1979, when the GPC declared that the "vesting of power in the masses" and the "separation of the state from the revolution" were complete. Qadhafi relinquished his duties as general secretary of the GPC, being known thereafter as "the leader" or "Leader of the Revolution." He remained supreme commander of the armed forces. His replacement was Abdallah Ubaydi, who in effect had been prime minister since 1979. The RCC was formally dissolved and the government was again reorganized into people's committees. A new General People's Committee (cabinet) was selected, each of its "secretaries" becoming head of a specialized people's committee; the exceptions were the "secretariats" of petroleum, foreign affairs, and heavy industry, where there were no people's committees. A proposal was also made to establish a "people's army" by substituting a national militia, being formed in the late 1970s, for the national army. Although the idea surfaced again in early 1982, it did not appear to be close to implementation.

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Remaking of the economy was parallel with the attempt to remold political and social institutions. Until the late 1970s, Libya's economy was mixed, with a large role for private enterprise except in the fields of oil production and distribution, banking, and insurance. But according to volume two of Qadhafi's Green Book, which appeared in 1978, private retail trade, rent, and wages were forms of "exploitation" that should be abolished. Instead, workers' self-management committees and profit participation partnerships were to function in public and private enterprises. A property law was passed that forbade ownership of more than one private dwelling, and Libyan workers took control of a large number of companies, turning them into state-run enterprises. Retail and wholesale trading operations were replaced by state-owned "people's supermarkets", where Libyans in theory could purchase whatever they needed at low prices. By 1981 the state had also restricted access to individual bank accounts to draw upon privately held funds for government projects.

While measures such as these undoubtedly benefited poorer Libyans, they created resentment and opposition among the newly dispossessed. The latter joined those already alienated, some of whom had begun to leave the country. By 1982 perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 Libyans had gone abroad; because many of the emigrants were among the enterprising and better educated Libyans, they represented a significant loss of managerial and technical expertise.

Some of the exiles formed active opposition groups. Although the groups were generally ineffective, Qadhafi nevertheless in early 1979 warned opposition leaders to return home immediately or face "liquidation." A wave of assassinations of prominent Libyan exiles, mostly in Western Europe, followed. Few opponents responded to the 1979 call to "repentance" or to a similar one issued in October 1982 in which Qadhafi once again threatened liquidation of the recalcitrant, the GPC having already declared their personal property forfeit.

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Internal opposition came from elements of the middle class who opposed Qadhafi's economic reforms and from students and intellectuals who criticized his ideology. He also incurred the anger of the Islamic community for his unorthodox interpretations of the doctrine and traditions of Islam, his challenge to the authority of the religious establishment, and his contention that the ideas in The Green Book were compatible with and based upon Islam. Endowed Islamic properties (habus) were nationalized as part of Qadhafi's economic reforms, and he urged "the masses" to take over mosques.

The most serious challenges came from the armed forces, especially the officers' corps, and from the RCC. Perhaps the most important one occurred in 1975 when Minister of Planning and RCC member Major Umar Mihayshi and about thirty army officers attempted a coup after disagreements over political economic policies. The failure of the coup led to the flight of Mihayshi and part of the country's technocratic elite. In a move that signaled a new intolerance of dissent, the regime executed twenty-two of the accused army officers in 1977, the first such punishment in more than twenty years. Further executions of dissident army officers were reported in 1979, and in August 1980 several hundred people were allegedly killed in the wake of an unsuccessful army revolt centered in Tobruk.

Libyan Democracy vs Western Democracy

Two videos, one on Libyan Democracy, and another on Western Democracy. After watching these videos and making a comparison you will come to realization that the Libyan Democracy puts Western Democracy to shame.

Watch the videos and see example what I mean, and see why Libya is such a threat to the world order, and why they decided to destroy Libya through a stalemate.

Libyan Democracy
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Western Democracy
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TEI Book Analysis: The Green Book

Often critical of Arab leaders, Muammar al-Qaddafi has never wavered in his call for Pan-Arab unity, and he has never shied away from supporting revolutionary movements. Recently, his term as chairman of the African Union ended. (Consistent with the policy of the AU, the term of the rotating chairmanship is limited to one-year.)

Perhaps no other current leader has been so identified with the move towards a United States of Africa than he. Though considered by some to be odd and unpredictable, in this area, he has shown remarkable consistency.

He called for an emergency African Summit of the Organization of African Unity in September of 1999, which led to the formation of the organization of the continental body called the African Union in Durban , South Africa in 2002. Many African leaders have been slow to move and many Western powers considered it unrealistic.

Qaddafi's consistency and determination has actually reignited the movement towards the formation of a United States of Africa that would make Africa richer, stronger, and more peaceful. Despite his perceived eccentricities, and incessant demonization in the controlled media, “The Great Brother Leader of the Revolution” as he is called by his people, has remained a force on the global stage.

Because of the deliberately dishonest and even vile portrayals of the leader in the controlled media, not much is known regarding Qaddafi's political thoughts and his guiding ideology. He is described in the media as a dictator, yet in The Green Book, Qaddafi outlines the actual governing foundation that undergirds the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. That foundation is The Third Universal Theory which upon critical analysis puts many so-called Western Democracies and Republics to shame.

The Green Book is broken up into three parts:

Part One: Solution to the Problem of Democracy
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Part Two: The Solution to the Economic Problem

Part Three: The Social Basis of the Third Universal Theory

Qaddafi says political decisions in which one candidate is granted victory, simply because they obtained the highest percentage of the vote by the electorate effectively establishes a dictatorship in the seat of power garbed in the guise of democracy. Especially when three or four losing candidates, whose votes combined would equal a higher total than the perceived winning candidate, split the vote.

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He then takes on the parliamentary governmental structure. The mere existence of such, Qaddafi says,

In order to rule, the opposition party must defeat the existing instrument of government. To do so, the opposition must undermine the government's achievements and cast doubt on its plans, even if these plans were beneficial to society, to prove the incompetence of the current governing instrument. Consequently, the interests and programs of society become victims of the power struggle raging among the political parties.

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In Part II of The Green Book, he deals with economics, maintaining that, whether a worker received earnings from an individual business owner, or the state, “wage earners are but slaves to the masters who hire them, Qaddafi writes.

Relating to vehicles, Qaddafi calls it an essential need for the individual and the family and no person or party may own private means of transportation for the purposes of renting to others, because this represents controlling the needs of others.

Likewise, land is no one's private property. Everyone has the right to exploit it for farming or grazing for the duration of his or her life and the lives of their heirs.

Some Black people may be offended in a portion of the book in which Qaddafi writes: The Black race is at present is in a dire and backward social condition. This backwardness is working in the interest of numeric superiority of this race resulting from the lack of birth control usage and children born out of wedlock.

This he writes, is going on while other races are diminishing in number for a variety of reasons that we all are aware of. To be offended by the fact that one forthrightly states the Blacks masses are in the worst shape economically, socially and politically as well as suffering all manner of health-related problems, indicates that one has bought into the post-racial society proffered by many Black and White liberals, as well as White apologists that represent the wishes of their White masters. Besides, in the section preceding the word written above, he writes of the tragedy of slavery and his prognostication is that, Now it is the turn of the black race to re-emerge. Black people will prevail in the world, he writes.

If there is one recurring theme throughout The Green Book it is his emphasis on liberation.

The conclusion of The Green Book brings to a close his explanation of the Third Universal Theory which, Qaddafi says, is a harbinger of the final deliverance of the masses from all the constraints of injustices, tyranny, exploitation, and political and economic subordination. It also heralds the advent of all people's society in which all individuals are free and equal in authority, wealth and arms.

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The example of the new socialist society is to establish a happy society deriving its happiness from being free. Such a society is realized only through the fulfillment of the individual's spiritual and material needs, and this can be achieved by liberating these needs from the control and manipulation of others. Satisfaction of needs should be realized without exploitation or enslavement of others.