Colonel

Marquez wrote about the loneliness of dictators. About the terminal loneliness of the master of life and death. Imagine - when, at the end of the day, like a Minotaur, the dictator is left alone in his labyrinth - who should he strike. The solitude of the night is awkward – it raises the right questions. Even in minds that have lost the sacred power of asking questions.

Colonel Gaddafi. One of the official heroes of my generation's non-aligned upbringing. Namely, there, in the seventies, the communist leaders from Europe were infinitely uninteresting - bureaucrats in gray suits, with dark circles under the eyes that appear when you wait your whole life for your closest associates to destroy you, prisoners of spent rhetoric - so the colorful leaders of the non-aligned countries of Africa and Asia were incomparably more interesting. . Back then, in Podgorica, back then, you could hear that someone was "beautiful like Nasser", "smart like Makarios", or "good like Sirimavo Bandaranaike". Time of the Unaligned. And innocent ones. Today, it seems that there are no more of either...

In the XNUMXs and XNUMXs, an incredible emancipatory movement took place around the world - dozens of former colonies won freedom and independence. Many leaders of those movements in the West were, in intellectual and media circles, absolute heroes, uncritically glorified beyond measure.

Quite simply, the picture of them was far from complete. Parisian intellectuals supported not only Mao Zedong but also Pol Pot. Only later will the executed parts of the overall picture of these people begin to arrive. So for the former heroes of the SFRY growing up, like Mugabe, Saddam, and Gaddafi himself, you only found out what they did after they rode victoriously into their cities, having previously overthrown their occupiers or ridiculous local kings, like the Egyptian Farouk and the Libyan Idris.. Add to this list insane mass murderers like Idi Amin Dada and Bokassa, the Central African emperor, and you will have a clearer picture of that political pandemonium.

And their games with ranks - this one is a colonel, and he is more powerful than all the generals. It's as if they want to mock the classic hierarchy. To set oneself above ordinary meanings. It's every motorcyclist's dream. Gaddafi is not cynical, but sincere when he says - what a resignation, I have no function. And the most dangerous are rulers who rule without any official function. Montenegrins will also learn something about it, I believe.

Here, that story is coming to an end. Or - the last chapter. Even if Gaddafi puts down the rebellion, he is undoubtedly a resident of the last chapter of his book.

Don't think that there is no one to write to the Colonel. Chavez already wrote.

And the Colonel also wrote - that's how the Green Book was created, an incredible and bizarre mix of Kuran, Bakunin, Marx and Trotsky. The man had several important scenarios for himself - first he wanted to be the new Nasser, the "leader of the Arab world", and then the new Haile Selassie, the emperor of Africa and Asia, as Elvis J. once sang. Kurtović... He obviously doesn't want to be the new Ceausescu or Mubarak. And he's ready to spill blood in the streets.

But perhaps Gaddafi made a crucial mistake when he once wanted to abolish organized sports in his Jamahiriya. As he abolished all forms of representative democracy in favor of tribal forms.

You remember the TV shots when he throws documents from the balcony of the headquarters of the sports federation onto the square announcing that sport belongs to everyone... However, things change quickly - when instead of being isolated, he again became a great friend of the West - sport once again began to belong to the state, and the powerful Libyan companies even entered the ownership structure of Juventus, which, in fact, was unthinkable until yesterday.

But the detail that is interesting to me is that - if you flip through the newspapers from Vardar to Triglav, if you hear the statements of people on the streets of the former SFRY cities - you will hardly hear explicit condemnations of Gaddafi. It's not because people believed that Al Qaeda was really behind everything. The reason is on the other side – in resentment that cannot be controlled.

Tito's former pioneers seem to want to send a big apology to Broz in the other world with a reservation regarding Gaddafi's current actions. For some other bloody cities. But that's another story.

But why, as we said, did he make a mistake when he attacked sports? You know the one - sport is the last refuge... Namely, the so-called do much better. friends of sport. Let's say, if he had sensed what was happening in time, he could have made a smart move: to go to the head of the Basketball Federation of Libya. No one could do anything to him there.