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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Libya
Index
The blurred lines of responsibility dividing the ASU (as the
organization charged with mobilizing the masses) and the people's
committees (charged with being the primary administrative
instrument of the revolution) led to minimal cooperation and even
conflict between the two systems. Political participation by the
population as a whole was lacking, and administration was
inefficient. Qadhafi decided that if coordination and cooperation
between the ASU and the people's committees were to be increased,
and if organized functional groups (especially labor) were to be
brought further into an integrated participatory system, still
another innovation was required. The fourth stage in modifying
subnational government and administration involved a reorganization
of the ASU, announced by Qadhafi on April 28, 1975.
Membership in the reorganized ASU was open to all Libyans
(except convicted criminals and the mentally ill) as well as to all
Arabs living outside Libya. At the lowest geographic level, the
submunicipal zone, the population formed the BPC, all citizens
within the jurisdiction of a given BPC automatically becoming
members of it. By 1987 over 2,000 BPCs had been created. The BPC
was headed by an executive or leadership committee of ten members,
directed by a secretary (sometimes referred to as a chairman). The
leadership committee's function was strictly administrative--
announcing congress meetings, preparing minutes, and setting the
agenda. Qadhafi noted that the leadership committees would be
selected rather than elected, the results of elections not having
been entirely satisfactory in the past. Press reports later
announced, however, that ASU elections at all levels were held
between November 9 and December 3, 1975 (the term "election"
possibly having been used in the broadest sense to include some
less direct selection process). Each municipal district was
composed of several BPCs. The Tripoli ASU municipal district, for
example, comprised forty-four BPCs in 1975. Members of the
leadership committees of all BPCs within a given municipal district
formed the Municipal Popular Congress. A leadership committee of
twenty members was selected by that congress.
Leadership committee chairmen from the BPCs and the Municipal
Popular Congress were delegates to the highest ASU organ, the
National Congress, which met in 1972 and 1974. Also represented at
the municipal congresses and the National Congress were delegates
from professional groups and organized labor, a modification in the
old form of ASU functional representation based on workplaces. The
April 1975 ASU reorganization announcement stipulated that the
national representative organ was to be called the National General
Congress. A November 13 decree included formal provisions for the
new congress, the first session of which was held in January 1976.
By the time of its September 1976 session, the national
representative body had become the GPC, which had transcended the
old ASU National Congress in formal power and purpose.
With the 1975 reorganization of the ASU, the roles of the
people's committees and the ASU's BPCs were demarcated, at least
theoretically. People's committees were responsible for political
matters, and they debated both domestic and foreign policies as
presented by the national leadership in the form of a standard
agenda. In terms of authority, the political organ was superior to
the administrative, the ASU having been assigned supervisory and
guidance functions over the people's committees. The GPC, embodying
the will of the lower municipal and basic popular congresses, was
the highest legislative and executive authority in the country.
Data as of 1987
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