COL MUAMMAR GADAFY comes to the Libyan People’s Congress in an electric golf cart. His entourage, who box him in, arrive in half a dozen four-wheel drives. As he is mobbed by journalists on entering the hall, it takes his security detail 10 minutes to clear the platform.
He stands in a brown turban and a long white cloak to listen to the delegates’ applause. His face is puffy. His eyes squint to see beyond the flowerbed set into the carpet.
Sometimes a man in a dark coat and a black trilby steps from behind and whispers in his ear. Then the colonel raises two fists. He kisses his fingers and, in the stifling hall, sits down and removes first a red, then a white handkerchief with which to mop his brow.
Col Gadafy does not like the fact of the photographers sitting in front of him on the floor, so, with an imperious gesture, like King Canute ordering back the waves, he gestures one way with his hand and then the other.
Then the real performance begins, almost three hours of it. He laughs sometimes, but not very much. Largely he reads from his script in a low bass voice, sitting behind a long, ornate desk whose facia is decorated with gold seals and on which sit three bouquets.
From behind this construction he tries to explain that he is not a king or a prince, or even a president. When he is asked to come to the congress, it is as the “example of the revolution that he led”.
The power, he insists, lies with the people and their revolutionary committees. Sometimes, however, people ask him to intervene in matters. The non-president announces new policies and initiatives. He explains why his tone today is different from when he spoke in Green Square to the angry youth. Today he is speaking in the language of the world, not of the furious young people.
There are the usual flourishes. Col Gadafy says Libyans will “fight to the last man and woman” against foreigners. “We will enter a bloody war and thousands and thousands of Libyans will die if the United States enters or Nato enters,” he says. “Do they want us to become slaves once again like we were slaves to the Italians? We will never accept it.”
It is the unexpected things that stand out. He twice offers an amnesty to those who will lay down their “stolen weapons”, and hints at an apology and investigation for those who died “on both sides”.
There is money on offer, a constitution, and a free press.
A woman in a green, spangled headdress tries to reach the stage with a sheet of white paper as all sense the speech is coming to an end. She is blocked, but Col Gadafy is mobbed again as he walks to his cart. He does not drive but is pushed from behind by minders as journalists shout questions.
Then he is gone – it is over. Coaches come for the delegates. If there has been a vote on anything, or a debate, we have not seen it.
Another moment in Libya’s unique system of “pure democracy” – as the colonel likes to call it – has reached its conclusion. – (Guardian service)