Thursday, October 20, 2011

Gaddafi Is Dead, Tarhouni Is Doing Well

The Libyan revolution moves forward as Moammar Gadhafi has met his end. It's an event of some importance, since it leaves loyalists of the old regime with no hope that the dictator will return.

Obviously, what's more important is the progress of the new government. I've been using former University of Washington economics professor Ali Tarhouni as my guide to how well things are going in Libya. Longtime readers will remember him as the guy who cancelled class to become Oil and Finance minister for the rebels. My thought was that if the smart liberal former student dissident who got great teaching evaluations at UW is doing well, things probably aren't taking some kind of dictatorial turn. And things are looking good, as Tarhouni is now either Oil and Finance Minister or Deputy Prime Minister (news accounts vary, which is weird, but in any case things are going well). Here's an article about him resolving an oil worker strike last week by agreeing to get rid of the Gaddafi-linked chairman of the oil company whom the workers didn't like.

2 comments:

Hector said...

I'm glad that Lockerbie is avenged, but this was still none of our damned business, and Obama should not have contributed one red cent to the Libyan revolt. We didn't have a dog in this fight.

simplx said...

He’s both oil & gas and deputy prime minister.