A new University of Oxford poll conducted in Libya shows a significantly split population in the wake of the NATO-backed civil war, with a significant portion of the population not considering having a say in governance a big deal.
Indeed, some 35 percent of the population is hoping to see the current “transitional council” replaced with a new strongman within the next five years, and only about two thirds of the population really wants a say in the future government.
Oxford’s efforts to explain the results are in many ways as complicated as the data itself. Officials insist that the population “seems to be happy with the NTC” and that the approval for a new strongman says they “lack the knowledge of how a democracy works.”
Rather, it might suggest that Libyans are seeing how poorly what the West installed in Libya and calls “democracy” is working. With militias expanding across the nation, the situation appears incredibly unstable, and the will of the Libyan public is probably not going to be a primary driver of future affairs.
