Elections in Libya

Reasons, inhibitions, and expectations

Reasons:

          It is no secret to anyone that holding elections in Libya is a very important step, especially in this period after the erosion of the power structures and the evaporation of the balance of legitimacy among all those who claim it. 

There is currently no absolute legislative or executive authority in the country that derives the eligibility for its existence from governing constitutional rules that were agreed upon through traditional tools.

All there is now a House of Representatives elected in 2014 to remain in power until November 2015 at the latest. And it didn’t have the right to extend for itself after that except by a popular referendum, which did not happen, Not to mention the issuance of a ruling by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court nullifying the seventh constitutional amendment made by the General National Congress to the Constitutional Declaration to adopt the proposals of the February Committee that the General National Congress had previously formed based on its Resolution No. 12 of 2014 and assigned it the task of preparing a proposal for a constitutional amendment and an election law, which is what the House of Representatives was elected based on. If the constitutional amendment is invalidated as considered by some parties to the crisis, its effects are canceled. Its effects are the election of the House of Representative

 Add to the House of Representatives' rickety legitimacy; A consultative body agreed to be named the High Council of State, consisting of members of the General National Congress which had previously been elected in the first general elections that the country witnessed after the February uprising in July 2012. They extended to themselves after the end of their legal term, and their duties were supposed to end as soon as the elected House of Representatives assumed its responsibilities in August 2014; however, political and military complications prevented this as the country entered a stage of complete institutional division between eastern and western camps.

  These two bodies have exhausted their balance of legitimacy from time immemorial. They derive the legitimacy of their existence from the political agreement that was signed in December 2015, even though the House of Representatives did not explicitly recognize the political agreement and despite the repeated violations of this agreement by both parties; However, practically and realistically, it remains the last fig leaf that covers the nakedness of these two flabby bodies.

 At the executive level; The two conflicting bodies in Libya (the House of Representatives and its opponent, the General National Congress, and its successor, the High Council of State) produced several governments, none of which enjoyed absolute control over the whole country; none of which even enjoy total control over its areas of influence.

 Even the Government of National Accord that emerged from the political agreement supposedly ended the institutional division stage; Political and military complications prevented it from extending its control over the entire country, a large part of which remained under the control of a de facto authority. Everyone knows it, and no one mentions it.

 During these years, the international community tried - or claimed - to mediate between the opponents and conduct good offices efforts to reduce tension and defuse conflicts. However, all efforts failed miserably; the most prominent of which was the events that followed April 2019 and the attempt by one of the parties to control the capital by force of arms, which restored the specter of the division and brought about the fall of all mediation efforts.

 During a decade in which the Libyan citizens suffered from successive economic and living crises; The first of these was not the liquidity crisis, nor the last of which was the inflation crisis and the unprecedented rise in the prices of goods and services, along with other seasonal concerns such as the electricity crisis and fuel scarcity, among others, with the inability of successive governments to develop radical solutions to these problems.

 The country was divided, de facto imposed by warlords into separate parts, with the central authority controlling some of them fictitiously and not having an atom's weight in others, and with the inability of successive governments to exercise their right to monopolize the use of violence; In most parts of the country, de facto power remained for those who bear arms.

 All of the above makes the holding of general elections in the country an inevitable requirement, as it is the only way to renew power structures through a direct popular vote that gives a mandate to new bodies with new legitimacy that ends the current bodies and puts an end to the stage of division of the legislative, executive, military and security institutions.

inhibitions:

The absence of the valid will of the international community and the lack of a unified position is considered among the most critical features of the Libyan crisis. In Libya, the contradictions met surprisingly, Where France and Russia, the arch-rivals, supported one party in the Libyan crisis. At the same time, Britain and Italy, who are supposed to be allies of France, supported the other party. In Libya, Turkey and Russia stand on opposite sides while their positions meet in other locations. In Libya, America abandons the leadership role and leaves the driver's seat to others despite its claim to care about the Libyan file. In Libya, the significant role is played by countries that are insignificant, that possess the tools and move the scene in the east and west of the country, despite their inability to protect themselves. In Libya, there is an evident for the powerlessness of the United Nations and the Security Council to adopt a unified position on world events so that the Security Council failed even to adopt the proposals of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to choose his special envoy to Libya, forcing the latter to appoint an adviser with broad powers and assign this task to the American Stephanie Williams, who was refused by Russia to be head of the United Nations support mission in Libya.

 The absence of a unified international position left the space for countries wishing to impose their agendas in Libya to move with great comfort through their apparent and hidden arms. Because these countries do not want to lose their positions, they cannot risk allowing the holding of elections that are not guaranteed results that may throw their arms out of the game.

 In addition, most of those in power are ready to make all kinds of deals in exchange for staying in control and not handing their faith to the election boxes, which may - and is likely - to throw them out of the game. In reality, it is not in anyone's interest - except for the people - at this particular time that Elections are being held in a country whose residents see that the crises they have experienced over the past years are the product of those in power, regardless of their positions.

  I cannot be sure; With good intentions or bad ones, the House of Representatives drafted an election law that many may see as unenforceable, and despite the flaws that appeared in it, the legalists have extensively exposed them since its issuance; However, the High National Electoral Commission seized it as soon as it was issued and began to work on its basis despite the contradictions, perhaps the most important of which was the rejection of the High Council of State and its protest for not being involved in the consultations that led to the issuance of the law, even though it is the political partner of the House of Representatives, as stipulated in the political agreement.

 With the vast area of protest against this law and with the issuance of amendments to it by the Speaker of the House of Representatives without an official session of the parliament, that these amendments are attributed to; However, the commission continued to work on its basis despite its knowledge of the impossibility of the elections' success, which was apparent in the statements of its chairman during the preparation period and after its failure, which intensified the criticism directed at the commission and the fact of its impartiality and the possibility of its professional supervision to take this pivotal step in the history of this country.

 Some may see that the commission, since the first days of the issuance of the flawed law, has put up posters, opened the registration, and then handed out voter cards despite the series breaches that accompanied it; It may amount to deception and misinformation and put the Commission or its current administration under suspicion and may destroy any opportunity for it to supervise fair and transparent elections.

Expectations:

 The election law approved by the House of Representatives, in its part related to the legislative elections, stipulates that candidacy for the new House of Representatives elections will be based on individual lists and prohibits the participation of parties, which will inevitably put us before a new House of Representatives, similar to the one elected by the exact mechanism in 2014.

 That is, we will elect a parliament in which allegiances will be formed on a tribal, regional, ideological basis, and in most cases, personal, because the partial frameworks regulating political action will be absent from our next parliament as it was absent in our current one and leaves the country hostage to the personal ambitions of individuals, a large part of whom will run based on individual spoils Which were strengthened in the conscience of the people after what they saw during the past decade of an illogical enrichment of some members of legislative bodies, and thus the House of Representatives, which will be selected based on the law issued by the House of Representatives, will not express the conscience and desire of the people and will not often seek to solve the crises that the people suffer from, but perhaps exacerbate them.

 The shabby legitimacy that the parties to the Libyan crisis are holding onto needed a military force to back it up. This military force needed a legitimate cover to protect and legitimize its movements.

 Some of these military forces developed with time an unbridled desire for absolute rule and began to act on this basis. The world started to deal with it on the grounds that it was a de facto force that participated in dialogues and was invited to conferences. Delegations and embassies were sent to it even though, on paper, it is affiliated with one of the two political camps. It is thus represented in any dialogue without direct participation in it.

 This unbridled desire for absolute rule has made elections for these forces a mere means for them to gain power, and the leaders of these forces have stated that they will not recognize elections in which they are not the winning party, considering their loss in the elections as a compelling evidence of fraud, and therefore one of the most critical obstacles to establishing the election is the absence of any guarantees of acceptance of its results; There is no guarantee that these forces will accept their loss; In the event of its victory, there is no guarantee that its military opponents will accept the results, as if things are not complicated enough as they are; The candidacy of Muammar Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, to the presidential elections made matters worse, as his victory in the elections would not be accepted by any party, and he and his supporters would not accept his defeat and would consider the elections undoubtedly rigged because they believed his success guaranteed.

 Therefore, the elections, the law of which did not witness a broad consensus, and are supervised by a commission, do not enjoy impartiality and credibility in consideration of some of the parties to the crisis, and competitors participate in them that are only united by the lack of confidence in each other; It is unlikely to produce a better situation than the one that was initially held to change it.