Prospects for Democracy - Muammar Gaddafi

"Prospects for Democracy" - Muammar Gaddafi
Columbia University - Thursday March 23, 2006

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi lectured an American audience on democracy via a video conference link to a New York university on Thursday March 23, 2006 stating that Libya was the only real democracy in the world.

Gaddafi was addressing an unprecedented gathering of U.S. and Libyan academics prompted by a thaw in relations since the former pariah state decided in 2003 to abandon nuclear weapons and took responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

The conference at Columbia University was titled "Prospects for Democracy" and Gaddafi used the rare interaction with Westerners to tout Libya's political system as superior to parliamentary and representative democracies in the West which he said were "farcical" and "fake."

Gaddafi said: "The word democracy means, 'demo' means people, and 'cracy' in Arabic is the plural form of chair. Therefore it should not be called democracy because there is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet. This is not propaganda, this is not rhetoric, if you like the realities on the ground, you come to Libya where you see people sitting on chairs that is democracy."

Speaking through a translator, Gaddafi said Libya's system of Jamahiriyah, (popular republic), under which Libyans can air their views at "people's congresses," was genuine democracy.

Files : audio.mp3 and video.mp4
NB: Sound of the translator is muffled from 5:25-9:21 Length (60 Minutes)