By Ikeddy ISIGUZO, Chairman Editorial Board
As the globallyevolving Internet provides ever new access points to virtual discourse forums, it also promotes new civic relations and associations within which communicative power may flow and accumulate.

Thus, traditionally … national-embedded peripheries get entangled into greater, international peripheries, with stronger combined powers… The Internet, consequently, changes the topology of the “centre-periphery” model, by stimulating conventional peripheries to interlink into “super-periphery” structures, which enclose and “besiege” several centres at once. – Simon R. B. Berdal , University of Oslo, 2004

AFTER the fall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (Tunisia), Hosni Mubarak (Egypt) and the changes that the results have forced on regimes like the ones in Morocco and Yemen – now Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi of Libya – the issue remains who would go next as there is a long list of such fellows making pretence to leadership.

Berdal explains what is going on above. People have found new power centres through information technology, mostly out of the control of their governments. Centres are here to be understood as governments or institutions that have direct influence on collectively binding decisions, whereas peripheries refer to the public spheres, where public opinion draws its roots and develops.

As government become more oppressive, the people have to rely on their own resources to rescue themselves. If their country has vital natural resources like oil and gas, a big factor in the Libyan affair, they will get international support to push out a leader whose recalcitrance they could hamper economic stability.

Muammar al-Gaddafi, 69, had his country in his firm grips for 41 years. He could not have got that far without the support of the Russians and Italians who wanted Libya’s resources and courted him as a toe hole into African affairs. Libyans were statistics, useful for reference.

Imagine a leader calling his people “rats.” al-Gaddafi did in reaction to the protests when they started last February. How could a leader survive when the people have deserted him? North Africans were fleeing their countries in droves. Tunisia heightened the exodus. By this month, more than 11,000 people had landed the Italian island of Lampedusa, seeking refugee status. Ironically, al-Gaddaffi’s chummy relationship with Italian partially ran the fuel of Libyan policing of Mediterranean waters to guarantee that African immigrants did not have an easy passage into Italy.

The man who boasted that he would rather die defending “his Libya” is in need of a new home. There are very few willing hosts. Countries where he has spread Libyan largesse may come to his aid.

All his preachments about peace and brotherhood in The Green Book, his maniac attempt in the last three years to convert Africa to a socialist enclave (more importantly to impress the Russians) have long faded. Instead he invested in mystifying himself – more than 60 different spelling of his name, with more than three used by him, 40 young women as his body guards, all said to be virgins, forbidden to love any but him, and an enormous personal wealth at the expense of Libyans.

The aggressive attitude of the United States in subverting other countries while pursuing its agenda made the likes of al-Gaddafi prosper. Once they get support from China, Russia, France, or a combination of other wily dealers in the international power sphere, they neglect their people, become indispensable, and spend their time destroying their country. They ensure that their countries would be worse when they leave, a threat al-Gaddafi frequently made.

The duplicity of the United States shows in Syria and Yemen whose leaders are killing the people. They do not merit the ferocious attacks on Libya, which the America supervised through NATO.

National interests for different super powers mean different definitions of democracy to keep their puppets in power, normally against their people, usually for the benefit of the supervening super power and ultimately at great price to world peace.

The list of those waiting to wither with peoples power include Angola’s Eduardo Dos Santos, 72, and in power for 34 years; President Teodoro Obiang Nguema in power since August 1979 after executing his uncle Macias Nguema. Robert Mugabe, 86 and Zimbabwe’s only president after 31 years of independence; Cameroon’s Paul Biya, 79, and in office since 1981. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni, 67, after 24 years. Pedro Verona Rodrigues Pires of Cape Verde, 78, who became President 20 years ago, but had been Prime Minister for 17 years and Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compoare, 24 years, are other examples. Amadou Toumani Toure (63) of Mali and Idriss Deby Itno (60) of the Republic of Chad, 22 years each are in the incomplete list.

Dictators like Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 73, trouble democracy in Africa. He was elected in 1999, but has abolished constitutional provisions that limited his tenure. like al-Gaddafi, none of them contemplates the prospects of life outside power.

People’s power is ever present. People’s stoicism in the midst of oppression can misled leaders who become carried away by the self-importance into believing they have become gods. Dictators fail to learn a thing from the fall of their colleagues – they are too far gone to imagine they are human.

If Gadaffi makes it to exile, he may have reason to see the other side of life he systematically escaped in the past 41 years.