No, sorry to disappoint, dictator Moammar Gaddafi is not planning to democratize “one of the most dictatorial as well as opaque of Arab regimes.” But his son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, thinks civil society and representative institutions should play a greater role in global governance.
His Ph.D. thesis also criticizes “authoritarian, abusive and unrepresentative” governments. Rumor has it that dad is threatening to stop his allowance.
Libya this week assumed the presidency of the United Nations General Assembly and Gaddafi, who recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of the coup in which he seized power, is due to attend the assembly for the first time.
As one recent analysis notes:
Libya has not introduced significant changes to its political system, and especially not with regard to human rights or governance. The Jamahiriyah remains in 2009 one of the most dictatorial as well as opaque of Arab regimes. Its 6 million people enjoy no significant freedoms: the annual reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Libya offer a glimpse of the real situation, one of continued and systematic abuse of human rights. Those who oppose the ideology of the Gaddafi revolution may, under Law 71, be arrested and even executed. There is not even the flicker of diversity found in such neighboring dictatorships as Egypt or Sudan.
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