Friday, February 10, 2012

Who can run for office in Libya?

So Libya-under-NATO has a new electoral law.  It is such a mess.  They initially wanted to stack the parliament with "independents" so that people can buy their seats.  They then added a portion for "parties that were banned"--but all parties were banned under Qadhdhafi.  They also devised special rules: they said that any academic or writer who wrote in praise of Green Book (and a few Western academics wrote in praise of the Green Book for a fee, and some are still teaching at US universities) would be banned.  Let me get this straight: the Minister of Justice under Qadhdhafri and the intellectual mentor of Sayf Al-Islam under Qadhdhafi can run for public office, but an academic who was asked to deliver a paper in the regular conferences that Libyan universities were forced to hold to discuss the Green Book can't? OK.