Only Aqeela masters the card game
A meeting between the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aguila Saleh, and the President of the Supreme Council of State, Mohamed Takala. Those reporting the news of the meeting - which Egypt called for - say that it comes to try to heal the rift and bridge the gap between the two sides regarding the file of the upcoming elections, the elections which law was approved by Aguila and his council unilaterally, but rather he published it in the Official Gazette, while his agency and his council rejected it, and refused to recognize it and the amendments made to the text of the original agreement of the 6+6 Committee in Morocco.
(This meeting comes within the framework of ongoing consultation between the presidency of the two councils, during which they reviewed developments in the current situation in Libya, and agreed to continue consultation on the Libyan crisis to reach a Libyan-Libyan solution that achieves the aspirations and interests of the people). With these brief words, the Information Office of the House of Representatives described what happened in the meeting, and in almost identical words, the Information Office of the Supreme Council of State described what happened in the Cairo meeting.
(In the framework of ongoing consultation)!!!
What ongoing consultation while the two councils are on opposite sides regarding the most important file on their table. Election file; What are the aspirations of the people that the two councils seek to achieve when they were unable to agree on a law on the basis of which elections would be held?
Will this meeting bring something new, or will it follow the meetings that preceded it between Aguila and all those who preceded Takaleh, beginning with Nouri Boushamin, passing through Abdurahman Aswehli, and ending with Al Mishri? Everyone went, and Aguila remained steadfast, meeting with their opponents, and playing with them the same game of cards with the same rules and in the same way, and almost playing with the same cards, then he wins over them and they leave and he stays! What might change in the new meeting? The answer is simple: nothing will change in this meeting, and there will be many meetings after it, and the result will remain the same!
There are no elections on the foreseeable horizon, neither with this law nor with any other. Aguila enacted a law that his opponents, especially those entrenched in Tripoli, will not accept, and he stipulated for the implementation of his law that a new government be formed to supervise it! This means that in order to hold elections with this law, we must first remove Adbaiba from the throne of Tariq Assika, and then convince those who reject Aguila’s law to accept it. Both matters are close to impossible, and putting them together seems even more impossible.
Aqeela knows before anyone else that changing the government requires the approval of the Supreme Council of State, and with the approval of the Supreme Council of State, he will need a miracle to convince Abdulhamid Dbaiba to hand over power, and if he convinces Dabaiba’s ally - Mohamed Takaleh - to form a government that he describes as unified; we will inevitably find ourselves facing a third government. Dbaiba will not surrender to the current data, and Osama Hammad, head of the parallel government, will stipulate that Dbaiba surrenders in order to surrender. Dbiaba will not surrender, and then Hammad will not surrender; Thus, Aguila will hand over imaginary authority to the head of the (unified) government so that he can search for a new headquarters for himself, and enter into the context of the current conflict. After a short period of time, we will find ourselves searching for a new election law, for the implementation of which Aguila will stipulate the removal of the three governments and the formation of a unified government! and so on.
Aguila also knows that to convince Tekala to join him in his recently approved law, he will need to make some concessions in the draft laws, and accept the vision of the Supreme Council of State in preventing the candidacy of military personnel and dual nationals, and this concession Aguila does not have the power to make, because he would thus agree to the exclusion of Khalifa Haftar, and this will accelerate his ouster from the presidency of the House of Representatives, and the introduction of a new presidency, that may be more rigid in its positions, and may make us sympathize with the days of Aguila Saleh.
The regional countries are entrenched behind their allies with all force, and refuse to remove them from the scene in any way, because they know that the scene being devoid of their allies means losing any current or potential interests in Libya, and therefore these countries will cling to the presence of their allies even if that means ruling out the option of elections. They may express some flexibility in dealing with the other party, such as the rapprochement we are witnessing now between Turkey and the Eastern camp, or what we witnessed earlier between Egypt and the UAE with the Western camp, but these countries have invested all their cards and influence in one of the two camps, and know that by agreeing to exclude it they risk losing all their interests. This is something that none of the regional countries will do.
On the other hand, Western countries, led by America, show interest in the Libyan file, but it is not enough interest to make them press for a final solution to the crisis. They are pushing themselves to align themselves behind the vision of the head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, and his position on the elections and government files, but they do not show sufficient commitment to supporting this vision, and content themselves with tweets on their embassies’ accounts on X platform in which they repost the tweets of Bathily and the mission, and confirm their support for the United Nations' approach calling for holding elections as soon as possible under a unified government without putting sufficient pressure on the parties that are intransigent in their positions, or on the countries that support them, and sometimes even show identification with the orientations of the countries supporting the parties to the crisis, which show them in the position of support for these countries and these parties.
The United Nations Mission in Libya and its head, Abdoulaye Bathily, show reactions that often seem strange and incomprehensible. On the one hand, they support Aguila Saleh’s idea of requiring the presence of a unified government to hold elections, and call for the speedy implementation of this to implement the elections, while showing support for what it describes as the efforts of the Electoral Commission in this regard, on the other hand, it declares its reservations about the election law, and acknowledges the presence of defects in it that may make its implementation unattainable.
Moreover, despite its apparent identification with Aguila Saleh’s idea of requiring a unified government to hold elections; it does not support the idea of producing a new government, but rather leans toward the idea of merging the two current governments, ignoring the fact that Aguila Saleh’s idea in reality only aims at excluding Abdulhamid Dbaiba, personally, and identifying with an idea like this will in fact only produce a third government. Does the mission know that or is it following things to see how they end and then taking a stand on them later?
With the near impossibility of holding elections, at least under the current laws, data, and circumstances; an important question comes to mind, so what?
Will things remain as they are? How long can we maintain the current situation? Can the state withstand for a longer period of time in light of the unprecedented depletion of funds that has been taking place for years? Or will things slide into a new war? If things slide into a new war, what will the alliances between its parties look like, especially with the changes that have occurred in the map of alliances and understandings in recent years?
War remains a possible hypothesis, even if it is far-fetched at the present time. No one wants a devastating war in which he has no guarantees of victory. Both parties have tried and failed. Without international and regional support, neither party will be able to eliminate the other by force of arms, and despite the many adventurers, the belief prevailing currently is that all parties to the crisis have reached the conviction that they are incapable of a military solution, and the image of cohesion shown by the Libyan people in the face of the repercussions of the catastrophic floods in Derna and other cities of the East has given historical momentum to a peaceful solution and has removed - even if only for a while - the specter of the war.
So what is the way to overcome the crisis?
The way to overcome the current state of stagnation is to search for a new approach to holding parliamentary elections only in the first stage, where a new legislative body takes power that removes the flabby bodies that have been sitting on our chests for years, and forms a unified government that leads the country to a final transitional stage, during which a referendum is held on a constitution and then presidential elections are held based on a constitution referendum by the people.
The only way to achieve this idea is to bypass the current parties to the conflict, which will not accept any elections, and if they accept elections, they will not accept their results if they end their authority.
Earlier, the United Nations envoy hinted in one of his briefings to the UN Security Council that he would give a deadline for the two councils to come up with a new election law. Otherwise, he would look for a solution that bypasses them. Before the end of the deadline, the two councils produced the 6+6 committee, the distorted and defective laws of which produced a dusting of dust in the eyes, and thus it remained silent. The mission expressed its proposal to bypass the two councils and go along with them in the outputs of their committees, as if that would relieve it of the burden of confronting them and bypassing them with a proposal that would anger them, but would satisfy the people.
Such an action by Bathily and the UN mission will require popular momentum, which exists to some extent, and will also require international and regional consensus, which is not evident now, but achieving it is not impossible if the intentions to resolve the crisis are true, and until that is achieved we will remain at the mercy of Aguila, his council and Takal, and who will replace him later and his council, and the unworkable laws they produce, and the governments that do not rule.