THE GREEN BOOK by muammar GHADAF
PART ONE - THE INSTRUMENT OF GOVERNMENT
The instrument of government is the prime political problem confronting human
communities (The problem of the instrument of government entails questions of the
following kind. What form should the exercise of authority assume? How ought societies
to organize themselves politically in the modern world?)
Even conflict within the family is often the result of the failure to resolve this problem of
authority. It has clearly become more serious with the emergence of modern societies.
People today face this persistent question in new and pressing ways. Communities are
exposed to the risks of uncertainty, and suffer the grave consequences of wrong answers.
Yet none has succeeded in answering it conclusively and democratically. THE GREEN
BOOK presents the ultimate solution to the problem of the proper instrument of
government.
All political systems in the world today are a product of the struggle for power between
alternative instruments of government. This struggle may be peaceful or armed, as is
evidenced among classes, sects, tribes, parties or individuals. The outcome is always the
victory of a particular governing structure - be it that of an individual, group, party or class
- and the defeat of the people; the defeat of genuine democracy.
Political struggle that results in the victory of a candidate with, for example, 51 per cent of
the votes leads to a dictatorial governing body in the guise of a false democracy, since 49
per cent of the electorate is ruled by an instrument of government they did not vote for,
but which has been imposed upon them. Such is dictatorship. Besides, this political
conflict may produce a governing body that represents only a minority. For when votes
are distributed among several candidates, though one polls more than any other, the sum
of the votes received by those who received fewer votes might well constitute an
overwhelming majority. However, the candidate with fewer votes wins and his success is
regarded as legitimate and democratic! In actual fact, dictatorship is established under the
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cover of false democracy. This is the reality of the political systems prevailing in the world
today. They are dictatorial systems and it is evident that they falsify genuine democracy.
PARLIAMENTS
Parliaments are the backbone of that conventional democracy prevailing in the world
today. Parliament is a misrepresentation of the people, and parliamentary systems are a
false solution to the problem of democracy. A parliament is originally founded to represent
the people, but this in itself is undemocratic as democracy means the authority of the
people and not an authority acting on their behalf. The mere existence of a parliament
means the absence of the people. True democracy exists only through the direct
participation of the people, and not through the activity of their representatives.
Parliaments have been a legal barrier between the people and the exercise of authority,
excluding the masses from meaningful politics and monopolizing sovereignty in their
place. People are left with only a facade of democracy, manifested in long queues to cast
their election ballots.
To lay bare the character of parliaments, one has to examine their origin. They are either
elected from constituencies, a party, or a coalition of parties, or are appointed. But all of
these procedures are undemocratic, for dividing the population into constituencies means
that one member of parliament represents thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions
of people, depending on the size of the population. It also means that a member keeps few
popular organizational links with the electors since he, like other members, is considered
a representative of the whole people. This is what the prevailing traditional democracy
requires. The masses are completely isolated from the representative and he, in turn, is
totally removed from them. Immediately after winning the electors' votes the
representative takes over the people's sovereignty and acts on their behalf. The prevailing
traditional democracy endows the member of parliament with a sacredness and immunity
which are denied to the rest of the people. Parliaments, therefore, have become a means
of plundering and usurping the authority of the people. It has thus become the right of the
people to struggle, through popular revolution, to destroy such instruments - the so-called
parliamentary assemblies which usurp democracy and sovereignty, and which stifle the
will of the people. The masses have the right to proclaim reverberantly the new principle:
no representation in lieu of the people.
If parliament is formed from one party as a result of its winning an election, it becomes a
parliament of the winning party and not of the people. It represents the party and not the
people, and the executive power of the parliament becomes that of the victorious party
and not of the people. The same is true of the parliament of proportional representation in
which each party holds a number of seats proportional to their success in the popular
vote. The members of the parliament represent their respective parties and not the people,
and the power established by such a coalition is the power of the combined parties and
not that of the people. Under such systems, the people are the victims whose votes are
vied for by exploitative competing factions who dupe the people into political circuses that
are outwardly noisy and frantic, but inwardly powerless and irrelevant. Alternatively, the
people are seduced into standing in long, apathetic, silent queues to cast their ballots in
the same way that they throw waste paper into dustbins. This is the traditional democracy
prevalent in the whole world, whether it is represented by a one-party, two-party,
multiparty or non-party system. Thus it is clear that representation is a fraud.
Moreover, since the system of elected parliaments is based on propaganda to win votes, it
is a demagogic system in the real sense of the word. Votes can be bought and falsified.
Poor people are unable to compete in the election campaigns, and the result is that only
the rich get elected. Assemblies constituted by appointment or hereditary succession do
not fall under any form of democracy.
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Philosophers, thinkers, and writers advocated the theory of representative parliaments at
a time when peoples were unconsciously herded like sheep by kings, sultans and
conquerors. The ultimate aspiration of the people of those times was to have someone to
represent them before such rulers. When even this aspiration was rejected, people waged
bitter and protracted struggle to attain this goal.
After the successful establishment of the age of the republics and the beginning of the era
of the masses, it is unthinkable that democracy should mean the electing of only a few
representatives to act on behalf of great masses. This is an obsolete structure. Authority
must be in the hands of all of the people.
The most tyrannical dictatorships the world has known have existed under the aegis of
parliaments.
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