Libya: A new dawn
When uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt ensued the initial reaction was that they will fade away after the protesters become tired of the antics of gathering daily to chant anti –government slogans. Soon the authorities in these countries found out that the crowds meant business and were in it for a purpose—to force change. In […]
When uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt ensued the initial reaction was that they will fade away after the protesters become tired of the antics of gathering daily to chant anti –government slogans. Soon the authorities in these countries found out that the crowds meant business and were in it for a purpose—to force change. In Tunisia and Egypt, initial misguided attempts at clamping down on the protesters ultimately gave way to the realisation that they represent an idea whose time has come and as Victor Hugo had noted, no force can stop it. In Tunisia, it took the anger and not so amorous insistence of the wife to make President Ben Ali board the plane that flew him into the sunset of exile.
In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak allowed delusion of grandeur and a hope that a melodramatic plea about the years he had served Egypt would dissuade the rioters who were now massing daily in Tahrir Square to spare him the humiliation of walking away from the post he had kept for 30 years. They were ploys that failed woefully, in the end he had to go. And worse, he had to be arraigned in court recently, manacled and sequestrated in a cage to answer for his misdeeds.
For sometime many had thought Libya was immune to the political turmoil around it. But when Benghazi erupted into uproarious disaffection with calls for Colonel Muammar Ghadaffi to stand down from his 40 year rule, it dawned that the Bedouin people of the desert country were merely bidding their time. Colonel Muammar Ghadaffi’s reply to the insurrection in Benghazi was that any attempt to remove him would cause blood to flow on the streets in Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and other cities. He dispatched a rag tag of his soldiers made up largely of mercenaries and also flew aircraft sorties to quell the uprising, succeeding temporarily to scatter the ill- equipped opposition and killing scores of his own people, to the bargain.
Good reason should have dictated that the Colonel took a cue from the seeming smooth transition in Tunisia and Egypt. He should have created a platform to initiate a peaceful transition of power that will give him a safe landing. Not doing so and plunging his county into an unnecessary war opened the door for the internationalisation of a feud that should have been settled by giving his people some say in how they are governed. Now, with the opposition having over ran Tripoli, with the help of US and Western Europe and Colonel Ghadaffi not anywhere to be found turns all his threats into empty verbiage and crass braggadocio. It gives credence to doubts about his mental health.
The fact that his 40 year rule has been brought to an end has given rise to mixed emotions in Africa, where many detest the intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation(NATO) which degraded the Colonel’s ability to stand up to the rebels by bombing his stockpile of military hardware. They see it as another attempt at regime change, much like the Iraqi case and fear that Libya might suffer similar carnage, destruction and plunder. The human deaths caused by the bombings are seen as again a demonstration of the little value placed on other peoples’ lives by the US and the West.
Moreover, it is well known that the West does not harbour any altruistic intentions in Libya; what motivates it is the petrol dollar underneath the Libyan soil and that the cost of assisting the rebels to remove Ghadaffi would soon turn a rich and buoyant country into a poor one. There is also the fear that the veneer of peaceful co-existence among the so –called tribes in Libya would soon give way to bitter violent feud as have been witnessed in Iraq where even when the US has begun withdrawing its soldiers, the bitter inter-sectarian killings have continued unabated. A bitter outcome of divide and rule policy of the invaders.
Colonel Muammar Ghadaffi is like a folk hero on the continent who is thought to have used the oil money judiciously to develop his country. It is widely agreed that he has used Libyan resources for the benefit of the Libyan people and if ever there was an incorruptible African, nay Arab leader Ghadaffi fits the bill. He certainly is not like Ben Ali whose family owns most of the choice businesses in Tunisia, neither has he stashed away any oil money in Swiss Banks. At least no such revelation has surfaced yet. But even when he himself is said not to be corrupt, he does not mind indulging the corrupt inclinations of many African leaders by underwriting their expense accounts with generous monetary gifts. So awash is Libya with petro dollar that it is seen as an African el-Dorado, where many young men and women go to seek their fortune. At the on- set of the uprising many of them were trapped in a no man’s land, and had to be evacuated by their various governments. All this explains the anger being expressed by many people for being chased away from power.
Yet even his most avid supporters must realise that Colonel Muammar Ghadaffi overstayed his welcome. So personalised was his rule that not only did he fallout with all those he started off with—Major Jaloud for example– but also as his government unravelled it was clear he never built any structures upon which decent governance could be based. In any case, the whole Libyan uprising is aimed at making government representative, to aggregate the view of the people. And that would be the minimum requirement of the incoming government.