Why don't all the holders of sovereign positions leave?
On October 21st of this year, 2022 AD, at a press conference in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, two familiar faces appeared to us for what may seem in our subconscious minds to be decades ago: the President of the parliament, (Aguila Saleh), and the President of the Supreme Council of State,( Khaled Al-Mashri). The two men appeared cheerfully as they tiding the Libyan people that the crisis is coming to an end! Yes, the crisis This word summed up the suffering of the Libyans during the past years and what they went through, from political, legislative, and even judicial division, and from the intransigence of militias and armed gangs, and from the control of the legitimacy of weapons; and from the lack of cash; water and electricity cuts; fuel shortages and smuggling; inflation and high prices; and others, all of which will soon become From the past, the two men agreed to share sovereign positions.
(Aguila Saleh) and (Khaled Al-Mashri) agreed at the Moroccan Rabat meeting on October 21, 2022, to activate the Moroccan Bouznika Agreement in January 2021 to distribute what they called sovereign positions to the regions before next December, and they also agreed on what they described as the unification of the executive authority before entering 2023.
At first glance, it may seem promising. Logically, every agreement between the opponents is a gesture of goodness and a step towards bridging the rift and reunification, and other emotional resonant terms, but by reconsidering the matter, questions will arise that make it difficult to look at the October 21 meeting in good faith.
Among these questions: what value did the Rabat agreement add to the Bouznika agreement? Previously, the two councils in Morocco’s Bou Zenika also agreed to share what they always call sovereign positions, but their agreement only resulted in the selection of a public prosecutor and head of the Supreme Judicial Council, which is not considered an achievement for the Bou Zenika group, because the mechanism for selecting the occupants of these positions exists and is far from the interactions of the two councils. They did not investigate anything, with the exception of including the authority of the judiciary in their regional conflicts.
The holders of the positions intended by the agreement have continued in their positions since January 2021 without change, despite the parliament’s desperate attempts to make individual changes to these positions before and after this date without any success. What prevented the implementation of the Bouznika Agreement? Are these obstacles removed now for the Rabat Agreement to succeed, or do they still exist, so after a year, for example, we need another agreement, for example, the Marrakesh Agreement, Tangiers, or others, to activate the Rabat Agreement? What are the guarantees for the success of the agreement and what are the guarantees for its implementation? It is possible, and most likely, that this agreement will not exceed a political maneuver by two men who have mastered such maneuvers over the past years in order to prolong their time in power
It is also suspicious and surprising that the insistence of Parliament and the Supreme Council of State to rename the positions they agreed to change their occupants to sovereign positions! Rather, the strangest thing is that people accept this idea without denying it, as if it has been entrenched in their minds, so it has become a reality that we need an effort to change, and the reality is not that the positions that (Al-Mashri) and( Aqeela )seek to change, or let us say, to share, are not sovereign positions and have nothing to do with the work of sovereignty, whether in terms of law or in terms of politics.
From a legal point of view, the judiciary is competent to consider all disputes that may arise in society, whatever their cause, parties, and subject matter, with the exception of some cases that are independent of judicial oversight, which are expressed by the actions of sovereignty or the actions of the government, and which include, for example, the regulation of the relationship between the authorities and the management of foreign diplomacy. determining the political links between individuals and the state; declaring war and peace; determining the state’s budget, its sources of financing, its spending resources, and others.
It is known that institutions such as the Administrative Control Authority, the Audit Bureau, the Anti-Corruption Commission, and the National Oil Corporation are bodies subject to judicial oversight in their work and thus are outside the framework of sovereignty legally.
As for the political aspect, it is also known that the ministries in any government are divided into sovereign and service. Sovereign ministries are through which the government leads the state and achieves its policy and does not provide tangible material services to citizens, and at the head of these ministries comes the Ministry of Defense, Foreign Affairs, Interior, Justice, Finance, and Planning, which are ministries They are affiliated with the government, not bodies and institutions independent of the government that exercise control over them.
Although positions such as the head of the Audit Bureau, the head of the Administrative Control Authority, and the head of the Anti-Corruption Authority are definitely administrative positions and not sovereign at all, as they are under the legislative authority and are considered one of its tools in monitoring the work of the government, and it can be understood the desire of both houses, especially Parliament, to change them. But what is difficult to understand is that they consider the position of the Head of the Electoral Commission to be a sovereign position, even though it is an independent institution that is not subject to the supervision of the government or the administration of Parliament!!!
It also draws attention to the parliament’s desperation to change the governor of the Central Bank of Libya, and its strong adherence to the necessity of doing so, and its miserable attempts over the years to change it, all of which failed The first was when they appointed (Ali al-Hibri), the current deputy governor, (Siddiq al-Kabeer); when they appointed him governor in 2014, but that did not leave any trace, neither locally nor internationally, with the exception of( Al-Habri) printing a Libyan currency in Russia, which only contributed to the exacerbation of the financial crisis in the country, In fact, (Al-Kabeer) has been on his throne since 2011 with the appointment of the National Transitional Council at the time, and after the failure of the attempt to install (Al-Habri), the parliament returned in a new air leap, this time with a personality from the western region to tickle the feelings of the Tripoli street -The least real interest in these details - and they appointed (Muhammad Al-Shukri) as Governor of the Central Bank of Libya in 2017. And it is a decision whose value does not exceed the value of the ink with which it was printed, and (al-Kaber) continued on his throne unchallenged.
He was not taken from his throne by the Bu Znika agreement, so does the Rabat agreement drop him? It also draws attention, also in the repeated agreements of the two councils to change the holders of sovereign positions, that the position of (army commander) was not mentioned at all, so why? Is it not a sovereign position?
On the scale of sovereign positions, it is undoubtedly a sovereign position, especially in a country like Libya in which the incumbent of this position is appointed by Parliament in a capacity that does not originally exist in Libyan military law, and it is (the commander-in-chief of the army) has unlimited powers, up to the declaration of war and peace without even referring to his president. Direct (Minister of Defense), And also to conclude agreements with countries, participate in political dialogues, receive delegations and demand an independent budget that is not subject to supervision.
(Aqila Saleh) is desperate to demand the change of (al Sadiq alkaber), and he sees that he is the main stream to strengthen his political and military opponents financially. (Aqeela's) demand to replace him with someone who can control is a logical demand from a pragmatic point of view. But on the other hand, why does( Al-Mashri) not demand, on the same principle, that (Khalifa Haftar )be replaced by the principle of this with that? We hand you the position of the governor and you hand us the position of the army command.
(Al-Mashri’s )claim will be more logical than (Aqeela’s) claim, since he is the one who appointed (Khalifa Haftar) and made him the position of commander in chief, and therefore he can change him, unlike( Al-Mashri), who did not appoint( Al-Kabeer), but rather found him in front of him.
Another question that cannot be overlooked in commenting on the historic Rabat Agreement; Isn't the position of (the parliament president) a sovereign position, as is the position of the head of the Supreme Council of State? Why don't the incumbents change? In particular, the positions entrusted to the state and its policies, which are responsible, according to the political agreement, for drafting the election law and the referendum on the draft constitution, which are the most important popular demands at this stage.
It is illogical for Parliament and the Supreme Council of State to fail to lead the country to the permanent constitution phase and to draft an election law that changes the faces that have been in power for nearly a decade. They decide to reward themselves by sharing some of the positions they used to call the sovereign, in preparation for the establishment of a third government that will remove the specter of elections and ensure that they remain in power indefinitely.
In sum, for all of what was mentioned, the head of the Audit Bureau may be negligent in his work and affected by political tensions, and the Anti-Corruption Commission may be mired in corruption itself, and the Administrative Control Authority may need oversight. The governor of the Central Bank of Libya may be corrupt and a failure. He has failed for years to solve the financial liquidity crisis, and he is now refusing to change the exchange rate of the Libyan dinar, which may alleviate even a small part of the suffering of the citizen, and his relations with corrupt war barons are well known to be mentioned or denied. However, to reduce the crisis to these people is to flatten it and deceive the general public. None of these people concealed the constitution and stole the people's right to vote on it. None of these people drafted an election law designed specifically to die before being born. To continue in their positions and privileges that will deprive them of the elections if they are held.
Members of Parliament and the Supreme Council of State nominate the holders of the aforementioned positions-falsely and slanderously-to sovereign positions to convince us of the necessity of changing them, And let us agree with them and raise our voices by shouting, demanding the change of the holders of sovereign positions, so that the heads of all bodies go to hell and the holders of real sovereign positions follow them, so that the President of Parliament, the President of the Supreme Council of State, and the Prime Minister who is in Tripoli and his counterpart in Benghazi, and the army chief go to leave these first, and then look at the leaving of the others.