Who is Muammar Gaddafi?

Muammar Gaddafi

Muammar Gaddafi is commonly referred to as Colonel Gaddafi. He has been the leader of Libya since a military coup he led in 1969. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Gaddafi's government was considered a Pariah state by the West, denounced for many things:

• oppressing internal dissidence,
• acts of state-sponsored terrorism,
• assassination of expatriate opposition leaders,
• and crass nepotism which amassed a multi-billion fortune for himself and his family.

Gaddafi renamed the Libyan Arab Republic to Jamahiriya in 1977, based on his socialist and nationalist political philosophy published in Green Book.

Green Book

The green book consists of three parts:

• The Solution of the Problem of Democracy: 'The Authority of the People' (published in late 1975)
• The Solution of the Economic Problem: 'Socialism' (published in early 1977)
• The Social Basis of the Third International Theory (published in September 1981)

The Green Book rejects modern liberal democracy, "free press", and capitalism. Democracy in Libya is based on direct democracy in the form of popular committees. (However this system is limited by the fact that Gadaffi himself appoints a cabinet and departamental ministers, and the influence of unelected revolutionary committees throughout the government.) Freedom of speech is based on state ownership of all book publishers, newspapers, television and radio stations, on the grounds that private ownership would be undemocratic. (At least one observer has called the resulting media "dull" and lacking in a "clash" of ideas.) Libya's economic system is based on the premise that all employees must be "partners not wage-workers", and forbids paying employees a wage in return for labor

Dictatorship

In 1979, he relinquished the title of prime minister, and has since been called the "The Brother Leader" or "The Guide" in Libya's Socialist Revolution.He is the longest serving of all current non-royal national leaders and he is one of the longest-serving rulers in history. Gaddafi was a firm supporter of OAPEC (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries) and led a Pan-African campaign for a United States of Africa. After the 1986 bombing of Libya and the 1993 imposition of UN sanctions, Gaddafi gradually sought more benign relations with the west, resulting in the lifting of UN sanctions in 2003.

Protests

In early February 2011, major political protests (inspired by recent similar events in Tunisia, Egypt and other parts of the Arab world), which quickly turned into a general uprising, broke out in Libya against Gaddafi's government. After losing much of his country to rebels and experiencing mass defections, Gaddafi defiantly vowed to "die a martyr" if necessary in his fight to maintain power.

Source: Wikipedia