Libya – agreement on electoral law reached in Morocco: The agreement provides that the legislative and presidential elections will be held simultaneously and that the next legislative authority will be composed of two chambers, the National Assembly and the Senate.
Libya – agreement on electoral law reached in Morocco
The Joint Commission for the preparation of electoral laws in Libya (6+6), composed of deputies of the House of Representatives and members of the High Council of State, announced that it has reached a “full agreement” on the points relating to the election of the head of state and deputies.
This was announced in a statement of the same Committee at the end of the second day of negotiations in the city of Bouznika, Morocco. The agreement provides that the legislative and presidential elections will be held simultaneously and that the next legislative authority will be composed of two chambers, the National Assembly and the Senate. The note notes, however, that time is still needed to “formulate and complete the legislative framework.
The 6+6 Committee also called for the formation of a “unified government” to prepare the country for elections before the new electoral laws come into effect, assuming, not assuming, that they are approved by a majority of the members of the House of Representatives (the eastern-based parliament) and the High Council of State (a kind of “upper house” based in Tripoli).
UN envoy to Libya Abdoulaye Bathily has repeatedly stated publicly that everyone should be allowed to run as a candidate in Libya, including divisive figures such as Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, General Khalifa Haftar and Tripoli’s Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dabaiba. A new passage in the House of Representatives led by Aguila Saleh, an eastern politician strongly opposed to Mistino Dabaiba’s entry into the presidential elections, could hinder the success of the initiative and at least postpone the presidential elections “sine die.
End of political impediments?
Since February 2022, Libya has been divided by two rival political and military coalitions: on the one hand, Prime Minister Dabaiba’s national unity government based in Tripoli, recognized by the international community and supported above all by Turkey; on the other hand, the government of national stability, in fact a parallel executive based in Cyrenaica, initially supported by Egypt and Russia but now increasingly abandoned to itself.
Indeed, the general at the head of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army (LNA), Haftar, holds power in eastern Libya. To break the political deadlock, UN envoy Bathily launched a plan on February 27 to set up a new “High Level Committee” to draft the constitutional amendments and electoral laws needed to hold “free, inclusive and transparent” elections by 2023. Yet the new initiative presented by the UN envoy, which was coolly received in Tripoli and Benghazi, does not seem to be gaining momentum. Partial stability currently exists in the country, based on an implicit agreement between two powerful families: the Dabaiba and the Haftar in power in Tripoli (west) and Benghazi respectively.