What was Libya's form of direct democracy (Jamahiria) like in practice?
score:5
Jamahiriya translated is a state of the masses. The way that Gaddafi explained it was that the state was governed by the populace through local councils, and he was the designated leader of the people. In reality, it was an authoritarian state with Gaddafi in sole power.
In practice, the government was organized into "people's committees", which were local representatives. Each people's committee reported to the General People's Committee, which was Gaddafi's cabinet, with Gaddafi as the General Secretary and the primary decision maker.
The people's committees consisted of local people from each municipality who were elected into the position and served a three year term. This went through several different variations and forms, with the people's committees being formed at different levels, but ultimately the decision was to leave them at the municipality level.
So in response to your question, there was a somewhat limited form of democracy in the the representatives on the people's committees were elected. While these committees may have operated with the best interests of their constituents in mind, the final authority on all decisions fell to Gaddafi.
Upvote:-6
Most of the people here don't know what they're talking about. We've been too brainwashed by our media propaganda machine into thinking "democracy" means "electing" a "representative" ruler that we've forgotten what "democracy" even means. In reality, most Western governments in this day and age are not "democracies", but just electoral dictatorships, where the only choice that people get is which dictator gets to rule over them.
The original Athenian definition of "democracy" meant "people power", a system where the people do not elect "representatives" but instead make their own decisions. The first modern national democratic system of this kind was Libya. It was the first modern nation where it was the masses, not so-called "representatives", that made the decisions on how to run their country. This wasn't just at the local level either, but ran all the way up to the national level. When it came to making decisions on how the country is run, the masses would gather together at one of the 600+ local congresses and discuss the issue, eventually passing their votes over to a more central general committee (with members elected by the masses) where it would be the votes by the local congresses that determine the outcome of a national decision. Gaddafi had no real power within this system, but was simply a figurehead and nothing more, just like our Queen in Britain. Libya was the first modern nation based on true direct democracy, but it's a real shame how such a revolutionary democratic system is now being replaced by a corrupt Western-style electoral dictatorship instead.
Upvote:-4
Smoke and mirrors. It's all lies - he was your standard run-of-the-mill dictator. This includes finding fancy justifications for one's powers, in his case "direct democracy".
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