Why did Asayeh ban Tawergha from elections?
In a press conference in Tripoli, the High Electoral Commission announced the beginning of the first phase of holding municipal elections for more than 90 cities, several of which had expired, and several of which were new municipalities, and despite all the appeals and decisions issued by governments east and west, and the demands of the people of Tawergha to hold elections in their city, and to choose someone to manage their local affairs, the High Commission nonetheless did not pay any attention to all of this, and excluded Tawergha from the round of elections that will be held during the coming period.
Tawergha is still treated as a local council, and the strange thing is that this situation does not provide any benefit to the city, especially since it is trying to regain itself again and bring its people together, especially after the agreement that was signed about six years ago, under which the people of Tawergha were able to begin returning to their city gradually, in addition to successive governments pledging to provide it with all support and facilities for its reconstruction, and this has not happened so far.
Given that the people of Tawergha, after all this time, were unable to obtain from the ruling authority in Libya any real support that would restore life to the city, they found that it was better for Tawergha to have a local authority elected by the people of the city, especially since the legal framework exists, this is clear in Resolution No. 6 of 2015 by the interim Libyan government in the east of the country at the time, and after the political agreement under which the Government of National Unity was established, it was agreed that all decisions issued by the government that was in the east of the country would be adopted, and among these decisions was the decision to establish the municipality of Tawergha.
After that, a decision was issued by the House of Representatives deeming Tawergha a municipality, and it was delivered to the head of the High Electoral Commission, who in turn acknowledged its receipt. During the writing of this article, we were able to reach a representative of Tawergha who met with Mr. Imad Asayeh after the last press conference, inquiring about the reasons for not including Tawergha is on the list of municipalities ready for elections, and he responded to them on the following basis:
That someone from the makers of the agreement concluded between Misurata and Tawergha came to him and told him that the two committees had agreed to keep Tawergha as a municipal branch of the municipality of Misurata, which the agreement did not stipulate at all, and that there is no danger to the steadfastness of the agreement in the event that Tawergha turns into an independent municipality, And if we go back even before the February uprising, Tawergha was a people’s community in itself as the rest of the people’s communities, at a certain period.
Mr. Imad also mentioned that he is not certain that the security situation in that region is such that stable elections can be held, even though after the agreement between the cities of Misurata and Tawergha the situation stabilized to a very large extent in that region, and no major violations of the agreement concluded between the two cities were recorded.
At the same time, Mr. Abdelhamid Adbaiba, Prime Minister of Government of the Return of Life, stated during his visit to Tawergha that the city of Tawergha is an independent municipality, but it seems that this matter was for media consumption only, as after this visit, our people in Tawergha tried to communicate with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Local Government, who always says that (everything is in order, it is only a matter of time), but time was not on the side of the people of Tawergha.
Our source describes that the situation in the municipality is very dire, with regard to the services provided to citizens, and the Tawergha Local Council, which is considered the longest local council in the history of Libya, is content with maintaining the official state bodies and the headquarters of the municipal council, while citizens are still buying electricity wires with their own money so that they can light their homes which already suffer from poor maintenance.
Everything mentioned clearly shows that there is collusion on the part of the Chairman of the High Electoral Commission to continue depriving our people in Tawergha from exercising their constitutional and legal right to choose who represents them in the local administration; it would have been better for him to adhere to his assigned work and not to engage in what does not concern him and to announce the start of the Tawergha municipal elections, and to leave the security concerns he expects to the Ministry of the Interior, which has jurisdiction, and not to turn from a technical person concerned with the procedures of the electoral process So that he announces the start of the Tawergha municipal elections, and leaves the security concerns he expects to the Ministry of Interior, which has jurisdiction, and does not transform from a technical person concerned with the procedures of the electoral process, into a security decision-maker?!
On the other hand, all the legal grounds related to considering Tawergha as a municipality of the executive and legislative authority do exist, so why obstruct these elections!!
Today, we join all the people of Tawergha in their constitutional, legal and humanitarian demand to choose who represents them on the same footing as the rest of the Libyans; the time has come for Tawergha to return to the bosom of the homeland, and most importantly for Libyans to realize that they must return to Tawergha.