Their choices are their own: Libya to give Mahmoud Jibril a Landslide Victory
Mahmoud Jibril, who served as interim prime minister in Libya from March to October 2011 in the Transitional National Council, is firmly believed to have won what is being dubbed as “a landslide victory in the country’s first democratic election”.
In a result that has come as a great surprise to those for whom the Arab Spring was little more than an opening up for Islamists, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood, Jibril has called on the 150 political parties participating in the elections to form a ‘grand coalition’ – furthering his reputation as a political pragmatist.
It is estimated that around 1.8 million of the 2.8 million registered voters cast their ballots, a turnout of around 65 percent.
Another surprise of the election was how organised it was, and how smoothly the process went. As it has been summarised elsewhere “turnout for the national vote was good, violence was scarce, and voters were ebullient.”
As picked up by Juan Cole, there has been plenty of debate about what to do in Tunisia and Egypt about the remnants of the old regime (colloquially called ‘seaweed’ or ‘algae’), and the same is being had in Libya today.
Because of this Jibril has not been entirely free from criticism.
With Jibril being a former head of the National Planning Council of Libya and of the National Economic Development Board of Libya (NEDB) under Gaddafi he has been caught in the crossfire of this debate, though this is mitigated by his high-profile recruitment into the transition council as the country broke out into civil war in 2011.
The important issue for the country is what happens now. Colonel Gaddafi might be gone, though the hard task for future policymakers, set to run a very fractured political ship, is how to replace him.
One particular place where this will be complex is in how to present the old regime in the national curriculum. What is apparent, looking at educational textbooks from the 1970s, is that Gaddafi’s dream of absolute Pan-Arab unity often conflicted with any principles he pretended towards historical accuracy (geography textbooks for example were given to students without borders demarcating different Arab states).
The new Education Ministry has promised to revamp social studies textbooks in time for the 2012-2013 school year and revise history books within the next year or two – though given the extent to which history was distorted under Gaddafi, this looks evermore like an over-optimistic order.
To be sure, no one can judge how committed to historical accuracy and objectivity a new government under Jibril can be, nor can we foresee what kind of political landscape Libya will now bring. Though his reaching out to different political actors in an attempt at some national unity, that reflects the Libyan people’s genuine wishes, should give us hope.
Russia, it was said in a recent New York Times editorial, oppose change in Syria, and tried to block change in Libya, on the grounds that “revolutions have completely destabilized the region and cleared the road to power for the Islamists.”
In other words Putin was, and is, willing to see innocent people die for a series of ill-judged guesses about the political trajectory of countries after the Arab Spring. And this is even before we look at Russia’s weaponry client base.
But in Libya it did not happen this way.
Instead of delivering what everyone expected, the Libyan electorate has given a landslide victory to a moderate, a man who has been described by one voter as someone who “believes in national reconciliation”.
Gaddafi thought he could ignore the wishes of his people and “take the people to paradise in chains.” Unfortunately he kept those people in chains for 42 years, and paradise is the last thing they could expect.
Russia wanted to keep them in chains too, so as to continue selling weapons to Gaddafi – in much demand when he realised the potential of an angry population beneath him.
Times will be tough but Libya has said no to Gaddafi. They’ve ripped off their chains – and they’ve allowed themselves the free right to vote for who they believe will take them through the post-Gaddafi era, and then beyond.
You really have been drinking the Kool Aid. To describe what recently occurred in Libya as the “election” is ridiculous. (How did you like the election in Haiti?)
The process was rigged in any number of ways: for example there is a proscription not just of Ghadaffi sympathisers but of any favourable mention of anything Ghadaffi did. Etc: the process is familiar, ballot boxes are furnished, candidates vetted for reliability, opposition intimidated or assassinated and am international PR campaign waged to portray events, in which most people in the “western” street have no interest, as a triumph of democracy. In Haiti Aristide supporters, about 90% of the population, were banned running. In Iraq anyone who could be called baathist, by the cliques in power, was banned.
And so it goes. The pity is that sensible people, as you often show yourself to be, go along with these imperialist games whose net results include the further debauchery of democracy in the UK. Ghadaffi is dead, the worst aspects of his regime, however, are very much alive and ruling Libya.
Would the democracy you want in the Labour party include bans on certain kinds of opinions and proscriptions of individual candidacies not to mention ballot boxes surrounded by armed militias and “counted” by the powers that be?
As to Russian policy in Syria the New York Times is notoriously biassed, a willing organ of the State Department. Were you in favour of the war on Iraq too?
And do you really think that Russian policy to Libya was based on its arms sales?
Oh how I remember the jubilation we felt when the Shah of Iran fell. Along with many others at the time, I had been spending day after day in demonstrations, meetings and discussions with Iranian students here. I rember telling my union Branch Secretary that this revolution was different, it was unstoppable. Sure enough a new democratic Government with Banisadr as President was elected overwhelmingly. Within months, it was gone, and Khomeini’s clerical-fascist dictatorship was in place, about to begin an even greater oppression of the Iranian workers than they had faced under the Shah, who at least was committed to the industrialisation of the economy, and its modernisation.
We should not have been surprised. Allende had also been elected with a large mandate, but it didn’t stop him being swept away in a hail of bullets by the Chilean bourgeoisie, who then introduced their own dictatorship.
The reality in Libya is that power stems from the barrel of a gun, and the guns are in the hands of the clerical-fascists. Any Government in Libya at the moment is as meaningless as was Kerensky’s when power was already passing inexorably to the Soviets. It is as meaningless as that of the Republican Government during the Spanish Civil War, whose bourgeois politicians in reality represented no one, because the bourgeoisie itself had already passed over in practice to Franco. The mistake in Spain, in Chile, and in Iran was the belief that elections are decisive. The mistake also, was for the workers to beleive that there was some common cause between them and the bourgeoisie that gave them cause to subordinate their own interests to those of their class enemies. In each case, the bourgeoisie did what comes naturally and stabbed them in the back – or more accurately machine gunned them in the chest.
Even TV channels like Aljazeera have pointed out that even in Benghazi, lots of warehouses containing ballot boxes, voting papers etc. were attacked by amred gangs and burned to the ground. The country is dividing into its three historic regions. In the East, where the oil is, the people – what a surprise – want at least a high degree of autonomy, if not separation, so they can keep the oil for themselves. Of course, Jibril required an election victory because its only on that basis that he will be able to invite Imperialist forces openly into the country, to put down the jihadis who actually control the streets.
I noticed that in your eulogising for what a nice, happy, peaceful and democratic place Libya now is, with clerical-fascist militia controlling the streets, and one of Gaddafi’s henchman possibly about to win the election, you didn’t quote this other bit from the Guardian article,
“After two Misratan journalists were detained in the formerly pro-Gaddafi town of Bani Walid, Misratan armoured columns were deployed on Monday near the town demanding their release. And street battles broke out in the southern town of Sabha with one man reported dead. The fighting is evidence that Libya remains a fractious country and that security will remain Jibril’s key challenge.”
In fact, you oddly seem to have missed any of the negative comments in the Guardian article – and of course, the Liberals at the Guardian have been at pains to close their eyes to any misdeeds by those they have been promoting. For example, you also missed,
“Since the overthrow of Gaddafi last year, ethnic conflicts have raged in several parts of the country. Jibril said” and,
“One of Jibril’s urgent tasks will be to assuage federalist supporters in the east of the country, who ransacked several polling stations on Saturday, killing two and setting light to ballot papers. The federalists want a greater share of seats in the national congress.” though in fact as Aljazeera showed it was rather more extensive and serious than this, and led to calls for the ballot to be postponed, because it would be impossible to ensure that everyine who wanted to vote could do so.
You also missed,
“Misrata is the only place in Libya where Jibril is getting nothing,” he said, after Jibril’s allliance came fourth.”
You also missed their comments about Jibril having to deny claims that his party was secular!
Its rather difficult to get an accurate picture of what is going on, and orientate yourself to it, if you walk around with one eye closed, and only see the misdeeds of those you have decided are the lesser-evil. Marxists do not choose sides on the basis of who is the most “moral”, but on the basis of political analysis.
The French Revolutionaries were probably less “moral” than their Aristocratic enemies. The Terror they unleashed was pretty brutal and indiscriminate. The Bolsheviks were probably guilty of far greater atrocities during the Civil War than were their White opponents. Indeed, learning the lessons of the French Revolution, and of the defeat of the Communards, Lenin unleashed the “Red Terror” not just to destroy the Whites, but also to deter any wavering elements from giving them any succour. He put Stalin, who he called, “My mangnificent Georgian, in charge of carrying it through, because he knew that Stalin had the characteristics needed for such a task, which he undertook with relish, including against non-Bolshevik socialists.
If we chose sides on the basis of who committed the last worst atrocity we probably would not have supported the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution. We do so not on the basis of morality but of politics. The fact is that politically there is no reason for Marxists to support clerical-fascists in Libya or Syria, whose ideology is based upon medievalism, as opposed to Bonapartist State Capitalist regimes, who, however, brutal, are at least based on statised, capitalist property relations, the potential for their further economic development, and as a consequence a certain degree of modernism (if only 20th Century modernism) as opposed to the ideas of the 12th century! And, although as a Marxist I have no truck with the idea that state capitalism is in any sense socialist, just as I am opposed to the privatisation of the NHS in the UK, because I recognise it as a reactionary step, so I see those who want to privatise everything in sight in Libya, Syria or anywhere else as equally reactionary, and to be opposed.
Just as I’m in favour of an independent, socialist, working class alternative to both State Capitalism and privatisation in Britain, so I am in favour of the same thing in Libya, Syria, Cuba and everywhere else.