25 August 2011

MANILA: Libyan diplomats and students smashed portraits of Moammar Gadhafi, shouted “Game over!” and raised the rebel flag at their Manila embassy Wednesday as part of defections at missions worldwide underscoring the leader’s rapid fall.

As rebels stormed the Libyan capital and Gadhafi’s power and influence abroad crumbled, Libyan Consul Faraj Zarroug in the Philippine capital said about 85 percent of his country’s 165 diplomatic missions now recognized the interim rebel government, the National Transitional Council.

“It’s game over for Mr. Gadhafi!” Zarroug told The Associated Press. “Probably in a few days, everything will be over, hopefully. I’m very happy.”

In London, opposition Libyan officials rolled out a new doormat Wednesday bearing Gadhafi’s image so that visitors to his rebel-held embassy could trample over his portrait as they entered the building.

Libyan diplomats abroad have been pledging allegiance to the rebels gradually after the rebellion erupted nearly six months ago, but defections surged this week as rebels entered Tripoli in a stunning breakthrough. While missions to Switzerland and Bangladesh, for example, switched early on, Libyan Embassy officials in Japan and Ethiopia replaced the government flag with the rebel’s tricolor Monday.

A spokesman for the rebels in Dubai, Edward Marques, said Wednesday the defections had turned into a “cascade,” but declined to list the locations of rebel supporters. The Libyan government could no longer be reached for comment.

At the Manila mission, diplomats in business suits pulled down Gadhafi’s green flag and raised the rebel one, while young expatriates rampaged through the compound.

Students spat on the ripped pages, and shouted “Die, Gadhafi, Die!” or “Leave, Gadhafi Leave!” or “Game over!” “We can say what we want. No one can stop us!” said Mahmoud Binhafa, a 29-year-old student who was nearly breathless with excitement. “

Asked how they wanted Gadhafi to be punished, Libyan Elyosa Fathi Elgadag said each family that suffered during the Libyan leader’s long oppressive rule should be allowed to “do to him” what his regime did to many victims of human rights violations.

For decades, the world has only equated Libya with Gadhafi and known nothing about its people because his regime “didn’t let any Libyan to open his mouth,” Elgadag said.

Libya’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi was among the first diplomats to renounce Gadhafi and support the rebels on Feb. 21 and four days later Ambassador Mohammad Shalgham also denounced the Libyan leader, a longtime friend. Gadhafi tried unsuccessfully to send supporters to replace them, and this week the red, green and black flag adopted by the opposition was prominently displayed next to the U.N. flag in the lobby of Libya’s U.N. Mission in New York.

The Libyan Embassy in Argentina switched to the rebel side Tuesday.

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Libyan ambassador to the African Union, Ali Awidan, said he raised the new rebel flag Monday.

In the Zimbabwean capital Harare, singing and chanting Libyan protesters dragged down the green flag of Gadhafi’s regime hanging from an office building housing the embassy and replaced it with the rebel banner. The embassy in the southern African country has been closed for weeks.

Some impatient Libyans opposed to Gadhafi moved to force their embassies to switch sides. A group of Libyans briefly took over their embassy in the Bosnian capital Monday, raising the rebel flag and demanding that the ambassador resign before police removed them peacefully. Ambassador Salem Finnir told AP Wednesday that his embassy has gone to the rebel side.

Rebel supporters barged into a Libyan Consulate and adjoining school earlier this week in Athens, ripping up hundreds of posters of Gadhafi and hanging rebel flags. Police stood guard at the nearby Libyan Embassy, which had no flags and shuttered windows.

Britain, which had already expelled a number of Gadhafi diplomats suspected of intimidating dissidents, ordered the entire staff of Libya’s embassy to leave last month, turning the swank downtown building over to opposition officials. Protesters have demonstrated outside the building for several weeks, heckling pro-regime diplomats and waving rebel flags.

The Libyan ambassador to Turkey, Ziad Muntasser, told the country’s Cumhuriyet newspaper he had backed the rebels for six months but did not publicly reveal his defection because he feared for his family’s safety in Tripoli.

“I reject accusations that I am Gadhafi’s man,” he said. “I had a private reason: A large section of my family was living in Tripoli which was under Gadhafi’s control.”

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.