At the Interior Ministry I asked the man in the biggest office (with a broken fax machine and no working telephone) if he were the minister.And Qaddafi himself doesn't come across as especially reliable or stable either:
"Maybe," he replied, adding that he had been last year, then someone else had been appointed while he was still in post, but had subsequently . . . er . . . left town . . . "So, maybe I'm the minister," he added helpfully.
Gaddafi called himself Colonel occasionally and refused to acknowledge the phrase President, preferring the term Leader. He was costumed theatrically – admiral, desert Bedouin, Italian lounge-lizard. He occasionally used the trappings of conventional power – long motorcades – or the occasional white horse. However, he was just as likely to turn up driving a battered small Peugeot with the bumpers missing. I know, because he nearly ran me over one morning trying to park the wreck very inexpertly outside my hotel.But don't let the humor fool you. She talks about people so scared of him that they physically shook in his presence; about people disappearing and human limbs showing up in dumpsters. "Farce mingled with fear," she writes, "That is how the country ran. At the very heart of the mysterious administration was a clutch of men loyal to – but still very scared of – the Colonel himself."
It's not reassuring. The regime's short-sightedness has left no natural power structure to take over after Qaddafi goes. Adie even talks about how this was clear to people within the regime - there was no succession plan, and no one knew what would happen when he finally died. Now the problem is even more acute, and it is not at all clear how it should be overcome.
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