Jamahiriah

Jamahiriyya (often written Jamahiriyah , sometimes also Jamahiriyya ; Arabic جماهيرية, DMG ǧamāhīriyya ) is a new noun formation (from the plural form: Arabic جماهير, DMG ǧamāhīr  'masses of the people' as an abstraction in the meaning of republic ), which means “rule of the masses” . It should be translated as people 's republic or people's mass republic and understood as a form of direct democracy .

The word "republic" in modern Arabic is derived from the noun dschumhur  /جمهور / ǧumhūr  / 'crowd, crowd', in the singular as an abstract dschumhuriyya  /جمهورية / ǧumhūriyya derived. The word formation "Jamahiriyya" is thus an Arabic neologism . Since this word creation, the term has only been used in the Arabic-speaking world in connection with Libya under Muammar al-Gaddafi .

Libya

The role of the people's congresses and people's committees as well as an organizational chart of the people's power are explained in the first chapter of Gaddafi's “ Green Book ”.

→ Main article : Political system of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya

The system that existed in Libya from 1977 to 2011 provided that the Libyan people should exercise power directly through people's congresses and people's committees. Article 2 of the General People's Congress adopted the Declaration on the establishment of People's Power determined the Koran to the Basic Law. The General People's Congress, which emerged from the Libyan Arab Socialist Union , represented a kind of national assembly as the supreme legislative power , composed of around 1,000 delegates from the local people's committees and grassroots congresses . As the formally supreme executive power, the General People's Committee was a kind of government, whose secretaries (ministers) were elected by the General People's Congress, but in fact, revolutionary leader Gaddafi dominated the General People's Congress, which mostly accepted Gaddafi's “proposals”.

Burkina Faso and others

After the coup of Captain Thomas Sankara in Upper Volta , Gaddafi supported his revolutionary course. During a visit to the West African country, which renamed itself Burkina Faso in 1984 , Gaddafi praised it as the second jamahiriyya in the world in December 1985 . Sankara also stated that a “ state of the revolutionary popular masses” had been created and officially proclaimed the introduction of the Jamahiriyya system based on the Libyan model. For his "services to the establishment of the second Jamahiriyya in history" Gaddafi promoted Sankara to colonel on his return visit to Libya in April 1987, but in the same year Sankara was murdered in Burkina Faso and his revolutionary experiment ended.

After his successful intervention in the Chad civil war , Gaddafi agreed with Goukouni Oueddei in 1981 the "complete unification" of Libya and Chad. Like Libya, the planned unitary state should be called Jamahiriyya and be built on the Libyan model. The union of Libya with Sudan planned in 1990 was also to come about under the common name of "Jamahiriyya". Both projects failed.

swell

1. ↑ Gerhard Brehme, Hans Kramer (ed.): Kleines Nachschlagewerk Afrika , Berlin 1983, pp. 299 and 305.
2. ↑ Muammar Al-Qaddafi: The Green Book - The Third Universal Theory , pp. 24–28 and 35 f.
3. ↑ Munzinger Archive / Internationales Handbuch-Zeitarchiv Burkina Faso 25/86, Chronik 1985, Ravensburg 1986, p. 5 f.
4. ↑ Munzinger Archive / Internationales Handbuch-Zeitarchiv Libyen 12–13 / 88, Chronik 1987, Ravensburg 1988, p. 30.
5. ↑ Gustav Fochler-Hauke (ed.): Der Fischer Weltalmanach 1982 , Frankfurt a. M. 1981, p. 190.
6. ^ Andreas Fleischer: Unification attempt no ... In: Neues Deutschland from March 14, 1990, p. 3.