Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (Muammar Gaddafi's son & one-time heir; d. Feb 2026) — his 20 Feb 2011 televised address during the uprising (per Al-Monitor): warning that toppling the regime would fragment Libya — "All of Libya will be destroyed. We will need 40 years to reach an agreement on how to run the country… everyone will want to be president, or emir." The Gaddafi-restorationist / strong-central-authority pole.

All of Libya will be destroyed. We will need 40 years to reach an agreement on how to run the country, because today, everyone will want to be president, or emir, and everybody will want to run the country.

[RE-SOURCED RESUBMISSION: an earlier version of this Saif al-Islam Gaddafi document (doc 3aa09568) was auditor-rejected for citing Wikipedia as the source_url; this version cites a news outlet (Al-Monitor) reproducing his statement. Source is English (Al-Monitor, Feb 2026 obituary, quoting his 20 February 2011 televised address — Al-Monitor's English rendering of his Arabic TV speech, delivered "wagging his finger at the camera"); tier-2; confirmed verbatim against the fetched page (the source's terminal comma before "he said" is rendered here as a period; wording unchanged).] Declared positions of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi — the second son and one-time heir apparent of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi; once seen as a Western-educated (LSE) reformer, he became a chief defender of the regime and an architect of its crackdown during the 2011 uprising, was later captured and sentenced to death in absentia, attempted a political COMEBACK (a 2021 presidential bid), and was killed in February 2026. In his infamous 20 February 2011 televised address — as the uprising spread — he warned that toppling the regime would shatter Libya into warlordism: "All of Libya will be destroyed. We will need 40 years to reach an agreement on how to run the country, because today, everyone will want to be president, or emir, and everybody will want to run the country" (vowing the government would fight "to the last man, woman and bullet"). The post-2011 decade of rival governments, militias and a partitioned state bore out the fragmentation he predicted, and he later pitched his return as restoring "the country's lost unity." This is the LIBYAN GADDAFI-RESTORATIONIST / STRONG-CENTRAL-AUTHORITY pole — one unifying authority and national unity over revolutionary pluralism, framed as the antidote to chaos and partition — distinct from the revolutionary, Islamist and federalist currents that emerged after 2011. [Axes: regime-type (strong centralized one-leader authority vs fragmented pluralism; authoritarian order), state-cohesion (national unity vs warlordism / partition; the state as a bulwark against chaos), revolution-vs-stability (defence of the old regime; restoration over revolution), legitimacy (dynastic / Gaddafi-legacy claim to rule).]