While their beloved country lay in substantial NATO bombed ruin, the pro-Gadhafi LLF has some major pluses on its side. One is the tribes who during last summer were starting to stand up against NATO just as Tripoli fell before they launched their efforts which included a new Constitution. The LLF believes the tribes can be crucial in getting out the vote.
Perhaps an even a more powerful arrow in the LLF's quiver as it launches its insurgency is the 35 years of political experience gained by the hundreds of Libyan People's Congresses long established in every village in Libya along with the Secretariats of the People's Conferences. While currently inactive (outlawed by NATO--truth be told) they are quickly regrouping and are expected to be able to dominate any forthcoming election in terms of getting out the vote.
Libya's Peoples Congresses have sometimes been the objects of ridicule by some under informed self-styled Libya "experts, "the People's Congresses, based on the Green book series written By "Baba" Moammar." In fact they are actually quite democratic and a study of their work makes clear that they have increasingly functioned not as mere rubber stamps for ideas that were floated from over the walls of Bab al Azziza barracks.
A secretary general of one of the Congresses, now working in Niger, repeated what one western delegation was told during a fascinating late June three hour briefing at the Tripoli HQ of the national PC Secretariat. Participants were shown attendance and voting records as well of each item voted on, for the past decade and the minutes of the most recent People's Congress debates. They illustrate the similarities between the People's Congresses and New England Town Meeting in terms of the local population making decisions that affect their community and an open agenda where complaints and new proposals can be made and debated. Libyan leaders, including Muammar Gadhafi lost plenty of votes on items they favored or had originally proposed. In the last few years the Guide declined to take public positions on the items to be voted on in the PC's because he preferred not to influence or interfere with what he called "the decisions of the masses."
This observer particularly enjoyed his 4 years term representing Ward 2A in the Brookline, Massachusetts Town Meeting while in college in Boston, sometimes sitting next neighbors Kitty and Michael Dukakis who I am told still live on Perry Street. While we both won a seat in the election, I received 42 votes more than Mike in our Irish and Jewish neighborhood ( actually winning my seat wasn't all that complicated, I simply took my friend Rachel Cohen with me door to door at Jewish homes seeking votes and Mary O'Malley with me to Irish homes) but Michael rose politically while it should be said that I sort of sank, following my joining Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the ACLU and the Black Panthers all in one semester as an undergraduate Boston University. My quick political evolution in politics followed an inspiring meeting with Professor Noam Chomsky and Professor Howard Zinn in Chomski's office at MIT. An admittedly simple fellow from a small Oregon town, I left our 90 minute meeting with a book bag full of political epiphanies and have not been the same since.
The Brookline Town Meeting debates were interesting and productive and "Mustafa", the National Secretary of the Libyan People's Congress, who studied at George Washington University in WDC and wrote a graduate thesis on New England Town Meetings, claimed his country patterned their People's Congresses on the New England model. Unfortunately, "Mustafa" is also now incarcerated by the NTC according to mutual friends.
Who LLF candidates will be if an election is actually held is unknown but some are suggesting that Dr. Abu Zeid Dorda, now recovering from his "guilt driven suicide attempt" according to an NTC spokesmen (the former Libyan UN Ambassador was thrown out of a second floor window during interrogations last month by NATO agents but he survived in front of witnesses so is now recovering in prison medical ward) as the credibility of yet another NTC media release crumbles.
Contrary to media stories, Saif al Islam is not about to surrender to the International Criminal Court and, like Musa Ibrahim, is well. Both are being urged to lay low for now, rest, and try to heal a bit from NATO's killing of family members and many close friends.
Some legal and political analysts think the ICC will not proceed with any trials relating to Libya for reasons of the ICC convoluted rules and structure and uncertainly of securing convictions of the "right" suspects. Whatever happens on this subject, if a case goes forward, researchers are preparing to fill the ICC courtroom with documentation of NATO crimes during its 9 month, 23,000 sorties and 10,000 bombing attacks on the five million population country.
Some International Criminal Court observers are encouraged by the ICC Prosecutor's office pledge this week and as reported by the BCC: "to investigate and prosecute any crimes committed both by rebel and pro-Gadhafi forces including any committed by NATO."
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