The eastern camp has rejected it, the western one says it supports it and the positions of their foreign sponsors remain far apart: barely announced, the new UN plan to organize elections in Libya comes up against rivalries who undermine the country. If the latter has experienced a relative calm in recent months after a long period of insecurity, fratricidal violence and social divisions, the institutional chaos is stifling the hope of seeing it stabilize.
At the head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (Manul) since October, the Senegalese Abdoulaye Bathily announced before the Security Council, on February 27, the launch of an initiative supposed to allow “the holding of elections presidential and legislative elections in 2023”. The diplomat provoked the ire of Libyan political actors by deploring the inability of Parliament, divided into two rival chambers, to “agree” on the organization of these elections, initially scheduled for December 2021 but postponed indefinitely due to persistent differences.
Since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011 in the wake of the “Arab Springs”, Libya has been destabilized by divisions between the west and east of the country, with each side benefiting from the support of foreign powers. -the same rivals, the United States and Russia in the lead. Two governments are vying for power, one based in Tripoli (west) and recognized by the UN, the other in Sirte (center), supported by the strongman of eastern Libya, Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the two camps, each with its own legislative arm within Parliament.
The House of Representatives, to the east, and the High Council of State, which acts as the Senate to the west, however, criticized in unison the plan of the UN envoy. The position of the two rival legislative chambers was “predictable” since the UN plan will result in their disappearance with the holding of elections, explains to AFP Khaled al-Montasser, professor of international relations at the University of Tripoli. According to him, the two institutions agree to consider the UN initiative “as an interference in their sovereign power of decision and an attempt to impose an international will on the Libyans”.
After a disputed vote, both Houses of Parliament adopted in extremis, in early February, the “13th amendment” to the Constitutional Declaration – which serves as the provisional Constitution – presenting it as a legal framework for the holding polls.
” Last chance “
Abdallah al-Rayes, a Libyan political analyst, sees Abdoulaye Bathily’s initiative as a way of putting pressure on Libyan adversaries by giving them “one last chance” before “the polls take place without them”. “The international community wants to embarrass the two chambers, past masters in the art of wasting time and who indulge in political one-upmanship,” the expert told AFP.
In Tripoli, the unity government, led by Abdelhamid Dbeibah, for its part showed its willingness to cooperate with Mr. Bathily’s plan by calling on the UN to provide technical and logistical assistance to quickly organize these elections. Its international supporters also welcomed the UN initiative. The US has “urged” Libyan leaders to adopt “a constructive mindset”, according to a tweet from the US Embassy in Tripoli. The UK has also called for “free and fair” elections. “The conditions for the elections must be accepted by all and the results respected,” the British representation at the UN said in a tweet.
But for Khaled al-Montasser, “American and British support for the plan is not enough”, because it did not convince Russia, whose fighters from the Wagner mercenary group have a strong presence in the east and south of the country. Libya. “Moscow, a powerful protagonist in Libya, exerts all its influence on Marshal Haftar, who controls these areas militarily”, underlines the professor. And the Tripoli government is keen to prevent his candidacy by prohibiting soldiers and dual nationals from running, Khalifa Haftar being American-Libyan. “It is unacceptable to see the return of a military regime”, lambasted Abdelhamid Dbeibah recently, twelve years after the fall of dictator Gaddafi.
