For decades Libyans suffered the oppression of a regime that used to claim that its people ruled themselves in a unique system of governance supposedly invented by Qadaffy. It was all a lie of course. There was no such thing as people's rule. It was just a front that Qadaffy used to fool Libyans into believing him.However,
today is that tomorrow you were thinking about yesterday...
his fake façade soon cracked and revealed the ugliness of his tyranny. As he became aware of the Libyan people's resentment to his theory, he chose to keep the lie alive using it to mock the Libyan people and tormenting them.
When ruled by a tyrant, there is no government, no army and no rule of law; there was only Qadaffy, whose mood changed. Depending on how he felt on a given day the policies of the whole country changed just like that.
The Qadaffy era of politics was, to either join in the Qadaffy hypocrisy, (many did and were rewarded for it), and the more they cheered Qadaffy's craziness the larger the rewards, or tell it how it was. Challenging Qadaffy meant the death sentence or life imprisonment in one of Qadaffy's many hell holes.
The heavy penalty of voicing a political opinion made politics very unappetising for Libyans and the majority of them adopted a passive attitude. They did not want to participate and be part of Qadaffy's mockery of democracy; neither did they want to pay the penalty of life imprisonment or a public hanging. Who could blame them?