Loading bus, Holmes getting in bus, bus pass, map of Libya

Holmes:  If you want to get to Tripoli, you have to drive there.  For five years, commercial flights to Libya have been banned by UN sanctions.

01.00.00

Or if you're lucky - the Libyans will drive you themselves.  To our surprise, a roomy bus had been sent to the Tunisian town of Jerba, to ferry us across the border to Tripoli.

And in the bus was a jovial person from the Popular Committee for Foreign Information

Intv with man on bus

Hassouna:  If your intensions are friendly and peace loving, then Libya's doors are always open.  Whether you're from Australia or Europe or anywhere else, we don't turn anyone away.

01.00.40

Holmes:  But the Libyan idea of openness, and ours, were rather different.

Bus pass, tracking shot of landscape

On the Tunisian side of the border, nobody minded us filming our bus as it trundled along beside an unremarkable seashore. 

On the Libyan side, the landscape wouldn't change, but the orders would.

Holmes to camera, shots of police car

Holmes:  Well, we are now actually in the Great Arab Jamahiriya of Libya and the people apparently have given orders that we are not to be able to film anything between the frontier and Tripoli. 

We can't show you what's outside the curtains behind me, we can't show you the police car that's in front of us, in fact we can't film at all apart from this.

Flags

Holmes:  Led at breakneck speed by our police escort, we sped through the desert towards Tripoli - to be in time to film this.

01.01.30

Salim speaking to audience

Super:

SALIM ABDUL SALIM

Secretary-General, O.A.U.

Salim:  As we meet here therefore, we must reiterate our unflinching support for and solidarity with our brothers and sisters of the Great Socialist Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

Holmes:  The fifty-seven nations of the Organisation for African Unity have been calling for the removal of the UN sanctions against Libya for over two years.

Now for the first time, more than forty busy foreign ministers had agreed to make the awkward overland journey to meet in Tripoli itself.

Men playing

Music

instruments,

People on streets, portrait of Gaddaffi

The Libyans were determined to make the most of their diplomatic coup.  That evening, delegates and press alike were invited to a banquet by Muammar Gaddaffi.

Shots of ruined house, murals, Goma'a speaking

First we were shown around the ruins of the house where his infant adopted daughter was killed by American bombs in 1986.  Giant murals of the air raid enhance the effect of shattered walls and ceilings.

Holmes:  It's quite a museum, isn't it?

Goma'a:  It's kept as it is.  That's for the next generation to know what America has done.

02.58

Holmes:  Goma'a Belkhir, the urbane general director of foreign information, was on hand to rub the message in.

Goma'a:  No one can imagine such a stupid way of punishing any population in the world.  This is the style of the American administration with Reagan.

Car pulling up,

Music

Gaddaffi gets out

waving, walks along, into reception, sits

Holmes:  Muammar Gaddaffi is still one of America's chief bogey men.

The air raid on Tripoli certainly tempered his enthusiasm for financing terror around the world.  There's no hard evidence that he even knew about the bombing of Pan AM Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1989.

03.36

Gaddaffi waving

But the Colonel - or the Brother Leader, as he's known in Libya - still likes to cut a controversial figure on the world stage.

As the patient O.A.U. delegates learned, in the course of a two-hour harangue by their host, the man America loves to hate is also a man who loves to hate America.

Gaddaffi speaking to audience

Gaddaffi:  We are compelled to stand in the face of America because it is America that creates the conflict. It's America who interferes with other people's business. It's America who because of it's power thinks it can rule everybody else.

Holmes:  But it had been a long day for everyone.

04.32

Gaddaffi:  This is an historic occasion.  It is a day to remember.  Even if I am tired of talking and you are tired of listening, it is worthwhile.

Holmes:  At last, it was over, and the long-suffering delegates could think about bed.

Demonstraton, buses, men with placards, pictures of Gaddaffi, vox pops

But next morning, outside their seafront hotel, they were greeted by a spontaneous demonstration of support by the people.  Or at least, by some people.

Chanting

They all seemed to be young men of military age, sporting natty tracksuits and neatly printed banners in Arabic and English.

Holmes:  What are you demonstrating about?

05.25

Man with moustache speaking

Demonstrator:  We want the embargo lifted from the Great Jamahiriya.  We want unity of Arab States and resolution of the African conflicts.

Man with red shirt speaking

Freedom to the Jamahiriya

Group of men

Holmes:  Who decided it was a good time to demonstrate?  Who told you to come here?

Demonstrators:  We decided, we decided.  God is great, God is great.

Man with buttoned collar, demonstrators

Demonstrator:  We are students from the popular committee in Tripoli.

walking along

Holmes:  Ah!  A popular committee.  This, then, was the Great Jamahiriya, the State of the Masses, in action.

Holmes and crew sitting in lobby, Holmes looking at book

Over the next few days, as we waited for our hosts to decide what we could or couldn't film, I had plenty of time in hotel lobbies to read about popular committees.

06.07

According to Muammar Gaddaffi's Green Book, Representative Democracy is a fraud.  The only true democracy is one in which people govern themselves, through conferences and committees everywhere.

Sign, Holmes walking along with man, woman speaking to audience

The next day my new minder from the ministry, Mr. Mahomet Bedri, took me to a seminar on Popular Democracy at Tripoli's Al Fateh University.

06.38

Woman speaker:  We can therefore state that representation is an illusion built on hypocrisy and deception.

Holmes:  All sorts of strange people, from all over the world, were holding forth to a captive audience of Libyan students.

Woman speaker:  Why should people be governed?

Holmes:  I don't know about my fellow listeners, but I have to say I didn't find it all that illuminating. 

Holmes walking down hallway with man, painting of Gaddaffi

So I asked the Congress Moderator, Dr. Ali Farfer, to explain why Libya, under the guidance of Muammar Gaddaffi, found representative democracy so unacceptable.

Intv with Dr. Ali Farfer

Farfer:  Representation means that the people are not there - that decisions are taken on their behalf and this is theoretically, morally and politically false. 

07.25

This is illegitimate as we see it because nobody can dream, nobody can think, nobody can decide what the others want to do with their future, with their presence. 

So this is the idea, that the people should be let to decide their own future, to decide their own presence.

Vegetable market

Holmes:  And that, says Dr. Farfer, is exactly what happens in Libya. 

Every citizen is a member of a Basic People's Conference - they have the right and the duty to debate and decide on every issue, from education to economics. 

And in Libya, people means women as well as men.

Women working on television parts, women walking along

We didn't ask to visit a television factory.  We weren't entirely sure why we were taken here.  But like any other electronics assembly plant around the world, women's nimble fingers were doing the work.

08.29

And the workers we spoke to - chosen by us, not the management - seemed genuinely proud of what women had achieved in the Great Socialist Jamahiriya.

Intv with woman

Woman #1:  The revolution of the people in 1969 gave women freedom.  They started to unite and soon Libyan women were in a better position than women in the rest of the Arab world.

Intv with another woman

Woman #2:  An example is divorce and marriage - women used to be divorced without any justification but now thanks to the congress system, these days women can't be divorced without discussion and agreement.  And we thank God because this is a big step for women.

Holmes:  And is that divorce law agreed by all the men in Libya as well?

Group of women

Woman #2:  (laughter)  Some men agreed, some men didn't but the decision is in place.

Holmes:  Decisions like that, which effect the whole nation, are taken by the General People's Congress. 

09.39

Car along road, ,

Delegates from hundreds of Basic Conferences travel twice a year from all over Libya to the new capital city of Sirte, and we were going too.

In a smart official Mercedes we hurtled five hundred kilometres east in less than three hours.

Holmes sitting in hotel lobby

And than, for more than 24 hours, we waited in a hotel lobby, as Congress delegates came and went.

We weren't allowed to film the city.  We very nearly weren't allowed to film the Congress.

people at conference

The State of the Masses, it seems, is as paranoid as any dictatorship about what foreign journalists can and cannot do.

10.19

Men at meeting

But when we finally did make it into a Congress session, it was a good deal livelier than we'd expected.

At this particular session, they were debating nothing more exciting than a new system of awards for good citizenship.  Even so, there was plenty of argument.

Men on stage, men

Man #1:  Put your board down.

listening, voting

speaking

Man #2:  Let's have order in this Congress.  No, no!  All right!  Hold on.

Holmes:  Each delegate is the Secretary of a Basic Conference or Committee - the numbered boards tell the chairman who they speak for.  They're here to give voice to decisions that have already been taken by their members.

Man speaking from audience

Man:  My brother, the Secretary General of this Congress, you keep raising question after question abut minor details.

Holmes:  Even the feistiest delegate insisted, when we asked him, that he was no more than the servant of his Basic Conference.

Intv with Abd Elkader

Super:

ABD ELKADER AL THAEB

Al Harcha Basic Conference

Abd Elkader Al Thaeb:  The whole world knows that under Jamahiriya the people have the power.  They have the power to decide who stays where and who does what.  If I am meeting the job description satisfactorily, then they will decide I can stay.

11.26

Men listening at meeting

Holmes:  And the same goes, he insisted, for the people we would call government ministers - there they all were, lined up at the Congress - and the Congress could hire them or fire them.

But one person was notable for his absence.

Gaddaffi at celebration

Muammar Gaddaffi was still in Tripoli, meeting and greeting his African visitors.  Though he behaves like a Head of State, he can't be dismissed by the Congress. 

12.06

For the simple reason that officially, the Guide of the Revolution holds no position in the government hierarchy from which he can be dismissed.

Intv with Dr. Ali Farfer

Super:

Dr. ALI FARFER

Al-Fateh University

Farfer:  We look at him as an educator, as a teacher.  Sometimes his interventions become the guiding principles for the people but it is not his ideas or his decisions that make the people decide.  They are always free to say no, any time they don't want to approve his ideas.

Gaddaffi at celebration

Holmes:  But it's very seldom indeed that the Basic Conferences disregard the guidance of the omnipresent Brother Leader - as Secretary Abd Elkadir was frank enough to admit.

Intv with Abd Elkader

Abd Elkader:  Of course we need the guidance of the Leader of the Revolution.

Holmes talking to interviewee

Holmes:  In your experience have there been any times when a recommendation of the Leader of the revolution has actually been rejected by the members of your Basic Congress?

Abd Elkader:  No, the majority of his proposals or rather all of them, especially those that concern everyday life, we follow.

13.12

If we can't, we ask the help of other congresses.  But whatever it takes, we usually manage to adhere to his suggestions.

Holmes getting on bus, bus travelling, Holmes speaking to camera

Holmes:  When it comes to making sure the foreign press adhere to their suggestions, the Libyan are past masters.

13.36

tracking shots

of landscape

This was the big day, the twentieth anniversary of the foundation of the Great Jamahiriya - and we were off to see the celebrations - or so we thought.

Holmes PTC

Holmes:  One of the problems about filming in Libya, we've discovered, is that the Libyan's idea of what might interest you and our idea of what might interest you are two totally different things. 

We tend to find ourselves put on buses, without consultation, without warning, and taken to the most amazingly boring places.

Camera on bus

Holmes:  We were in the right town, Misarata, where we'd been assured there would be a day of festivities.  But the Libyans believed we'd find a tour of a steel mill a lot more fascinating.

Tour guide speaking, Holmes walking into room, speaking to camera

Man:  We are going to start from the point where raw materials are received, are delivered, to start the process of production ...

Holmes:  And worse was to come.

14.43

Holmes in cabin - PTC

Holmes:  Well, this experience is going from the mysterious to the bizarre.  We thought we were coming to Misarata to see the twentieth anniversary festivals of the Great Jamahiriya.

So far, we've seen a steel mill and now we're on a stationary boat in the harbour.   

I think the idea is that we're going to rest and repose and collect ourselves, because this evening there will be another speech from the Great Leader and hopefully at some time we will get to see these festivities.

But it's five o'clock in the afternoon and so far we've seen absolutely nothing.

Green flags, men marching along street, kids waving

Holmes:  By the time we got to the town centre, the daylight was dying and so were the celebrations.

15.39

Singing

Men in room, Gaddaffi arriving, chaos, jostling

Holmes:  But the main event - as the Libyans saw it - was still to come.  In the back corridor of a cavernous stadium, we were warned to be ready for the great man's entrance.

Men arguing/ pushing

The chaos and anarchy in that dark passageway were typical, it seemed to me, of the system Gaddaffi has put in place.

Nobody in Libya seems to know who's in charge of what.  Nobody but Gaddaffi really knows where they are going.  Everybody's watching their backs.

In the State of the Masses, there are no political parties, and no national organisations, around which opposition can form.

16.40

Audience reacting, Gaddaffi walking into room,

The voice of militant Islam has been drowned out by revolutionary enthusiasm.

soldiers, band

playing

Only the army, on which Gaddaffi once lavished billions, has the cohesion to threaten him.  Now it's being disbanded in favour of popular militias, and a bevy of rival security forces.

Everywhere is amateurish confusion, deliberately fostered.

Chanting

Holmes:  And above it all, serene and unperturbed, floats the man who's officially in charge of nothing.

17.31

Audience cheering, Gaddaffi speaking

Gaddaffi:  We should congratulate ourselves that the Libyan people have become a model to the world. 

You have the right, as a citizen, to voice your disagreement with any decision or law.  You can protest again and again, until you are heard by the people.

Holmes:  His vanity is awesome, his pretensions limitless.

Men in audience standing up and shouting

Gaddaffi admirer:  You are the finest creation of the Arab world.  You are the present but you are also the promise of our great future.

Others:  Bless us, dear Leader!

Homes looking grim with headphones on.

Holmes:  But whatever he and his admirers may believe, his country is a grim, unlovely place; like most visitors, we left Gaddaffi's Libya without regret.

Admirers shouting:  He is the revolution, the greatest revolution!

ENDS

18.51