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Libyan legal experts to draw up new constitution
A government panel meets next week to start drawing up a Libyan constitution, which was abolished when Moammar Gadhafi seized power almost four decades ago, the committee chairman said Friday. "A plan for a constitution has been submitted to the committee, which will examine it and revise it legally," judge Abdel-Rahman Bututa told AFP, adding that the team of legal experts will hold its first meeting next week.The constitution project is taking place at the initiative of Gadhafi's reformist son Seif al-Islam with the collaboration of European and US experts, said Yussef Sawan, executive director of the Gadhafi Foundation for Development. "Work on this project is not starting from zero. There are some references already," said Bututa, citing the Green Book - the collected thoughts of Gadhafi - and a 1988 declaration on people's committees. In August last year, Seif al-Islam, viewed as a possible successor to his father, outlined plans for the country's first constitution since the 1969 coup. But he also said there were certain "red lines" that could not be crossed, including Colonel Gadhafi's role as leader of the country and Libya's adherence to Islam and sharia, Islamic law. No information has been released on the text of the constitution project, which will later be submitted for the approval of the People's Congress, as stipulated under Gadhafi's "jamahariya" or state of the masses system. One of the US experts involved in the project, political theorist Benjamin R. Barber, told AFP by telephone from New York that the process reflected "the need of change in government structures as they interact with the global economy and with the West." For Barber, the project is like "a dialectic dance between where the Libyans are coming from and where Libya wants to go." Posted by: Fred 2008-12-13 |
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