No Tears For Gaddafi

The law of Karma is catching up with Muammar Gaddafi, one of Africa’s most brutal and dictatorial leaders, and certainly a source of instability in many parts of the African continent and elsewhere in the world.

As he hides and yet witnesses the unfolding developments in the oil rich North African country, we shed no tears for him.

We consider the uprising in that country an inevitable struggle to rid itself of a tyrant whose contribution towards the toppling of many legitimate governments in Africa is common knowledge.

Even political bad guys in West Africa have benefitted from his coup-supporting largesse which catapulted them from nothingness to positions of presidents and leaders who then refuse to go when their country men are obviously tired of them. They become dictators, toeing the line of their benefactor whose pathological penchant for meddling in the affairs of other countries is unprecedented.

His linkage with extremists and the lunatic fringe in the international political arena has resulted in many an untoward repercussion in African politics and elsewhere.

His single-handed funding of bombings in some parts of the world, especially the Lockerbie downing of an aircraft in which many innocent lives were lost, is still fresh in the minds of members of the international community and the bereaved families.

His subsequent manouvre of employing diplomatic tricks to have the principal Libyan intelligence officer responsible for the Lockerbie affair freed, remains a sore issue haunting the Scottish government.

Is this the kind of character that some African leaders are shedding tears for? Many of them are beneficiaries of his largesse at the expense of his Libyan compatriots whom he now turns round to describe as dogs, cockroaches and rats. These leaders, surprisingly, see no wrong in the manner in which he carries himself about in the international political community.

Gaddafi, the man who overthrew King Iddris in a coup, to put an end to a dynasty, was ironically preparing to hand over the leadership of Libya to Saif Al Islam, his son.

He is without doubt a bad example to democracy in Africa and so the earlier his exit is expedited, the better it would be for continental stability and peace.

His appearance at a university campus to supervise the hanging of students who challenged his rule was one of his most dastardly shows of inhumanity yet.

The brutal putting down of prisoners’ agitation in a prison on his orders left behind some 1,500 dead. As for Ghanaians killed in Libyan prisons, the records are not hidden as families of those whose lives he refused to spare remain living reminders.

As political gravity pulls him down, Gaddafi is not going down alone. He is surely doing so with a few equally diabolical personalities, his associates. Unfortunately however, innocent blood is being spilled in that beautiful country, and it is seeing an unprecedented destruction as he refuses to give up. But that can’t be for long.

What has Africa done to deserve such eccentric characters who think erroneously that they alone should rule even if that takes forty years?

We need a stable Africa and this can only be achieved without dangerous players like Gaddafi who is too quick to champion the cause of destabilization ventures.

Four years, twenty years or forty years are not forever. They shall surely come to an end as being witnessed in Libya. The day of reckoning shall inevitably catch up with them. Gaddafi has himself to blame for what he is suffering somewhere in a burrow under the surface of the earth.

As for the young doctors, engineers, masons, drivers and businessmen who have taken up arms to rid their country of the real cockroach and rat, we can only wish them Godspeed as they perpetuate this noble enterprise in this holy month of Ramadan.

Let opportunistic local stomach politicians shout themselves hoarse. The Libyan people shall triumph over the devil.

Source: Daily guide (Editorial)