Libya after Gaddafi: Can democracy win?

Racing to fill a power vacuum, Libya is set to start building a multiparty democracy former ruler Muammar Gaddafi once derided as being for “donkeys”.

Tens of thousands of people who before this year’s uprising had known nothing but Gaddafi’s all-powerful police state are due to pack a square in the second city Benghazi to hear interim government leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil announce the “liberation” of Libya.

Jalil’s speech is intended to set the clock ticking on a process to set up a multiparty democracy, a system Gaddafi railed against for most of his 42 years in power.

In 2007 Gaddafi, whose “state of the masses” was seen by many Libyans as despotism, said democracy was a sham in which people were “ridden like donkeys” by powerful interests.

But some Libyans fear that without strong leadership the revolution could now collapse into armed infighting, preventing the country from ever attempting the novelty of the ballot box.

The lack of a clear plan for Gaddafi’s burial suggests to some analysts that there is some justification for fears of a descent into leaderless turmoil.

The loosely disciplined militias that sprang up in each town to topple the dictator with the help of NATO airpower are still armed. The places they represent will want a greater say in the country’s future, particularly the second and third cities Benghazi and Misrata which were starved of investment by Gaddafi.

It was fighters from Misrata who emerged from a lengthy and bloody siege to play a large part in taking Tripoli and later caught Gaddafi, cowering in a drainage pipe outside Sirte.

Libya’s new leaders have a “very limited opportunity” to set aside their differences, said interim prime minister Mahmoud Jibril as he announced he was stepping down on Saturday.

Jibril said progress for Libya would need great resolution, both by interim leaders on the National Transitional Council and by six million war-weary people:

There is growing international disquiet about the chaotic scenes surrounding Gaddafi’s apparent summary execution following the fall of his hometown of Sirte on Thursday.

A field commander in Misrata worried that trouble was brewing:

“The fear now is what is going to happen next,” he said, speaking to Reuters privately, as ordinary Libyans, some taking pictures for family albums, filed in under armed guard to see for themselves that the man they feared was truly dead.

“There is going to be regional in-fighting. You have Zintan and Misrata on one side and then Benghazi and the east,” the guerrilla said. “There is in-fighting even inside the army.”

There is some unease abroad over what many believe was a summary execution of Gaddafi. U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay has called for an investigation into the killing, but very few Libyans share those concerns.

Arguments have arisen among Libya’s factions about what to do with the corpse which has not been accorded the swift burial required by Islamic law and is beginning to decompose. Those viewing the body on Saturday were obliged to cover their faces with surgical masks.

Gaddafi’s surviving family, in exile, wants his body and that of his son Mo’tassim to be handed over to tribal kinsmen from Sirte. NTC officials said they were trying to arrange a secret resting place to avoid loyalist supporters making it a shrine.

The disputes within the NTC have delayed the announcement of an end to the war several times.

But such worries are unlikely to be paramount in the minds of many Libyans on Sunday as they celebrate the beginning of a new era in their country’s history.

It will set a clock ticking on a plan for a new government and constitutional assembly leading to full democracy in 2013.

Reuters