Libya Table of Contents
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Source:
U.S. Library of Congress
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