The Electoral Commission announced the postponement of the presidential elections, which were scheduled for December 24, to January 24, due to the failure to complete the review of the lists of candidates, in addition to other security reasons.
According to press statements by the Deputy Rapporteur in the Libyan House of Representatives, Sabah Juma, the reports sent by the Ministry of Interior and the General Intelligence and Administrative Control Authority to Parliament confirm that “the elections cannot be held within days,” that is, on January 24.
She justified this by saying that “the reasons that prevented it from taking place on December 24 are still valid,” and that the commission set the date for January 24 without informing the House of Representatives of the date officially, in violation of Article 43 of Law No. 1 of 2021.
a losing horse
In the assessment of the security expert, Masoud al-Hamidi, one of the reasons for the failure to hold the elections on time is that what the sponsors of the Geneva Dialogue (between the conflicting Libyan parties under international auspices) were waiting for from the national unity government did not materialize, and that they “bet on the losing horse, because they believed that the government would control the country.” The situation in all parts of Libya, and that the security conditions are improving in preparation for the elections.”
Al-Hamidi added to “Sky News Arabia”, that “elections are impossible to hold if the world and the Libyans wait for a change in security conditions, especially in western Libya, due to the presence of militants and extremist currents.”
In the same direction, the expert in constitutional law, Gibran Al-Hadi, expects that the fate of the elections will be affected by factors that cannot end in a short period such as a month, including “the absence of consensus on the legal basis for voting, conflict of interests, and some loopholes in the mediation of the United Nations, all of which led to to the failure of the elections to be held on time.
Al-Hadi continues, in his interview with “Sky News Arabia”, that “one of the indicators of the failure to hold the elections, even before announcing the postponement, is the resignation of the United Nations envoy to Libya, Jan Kubis, and this clearly meant that he was unable to manage the Libyan file and was certain that the elections would be impossible, and he wanted Not taking responsibility for it.”
Alternative options
On the other hand, Abdel Hafeez Ghoga, the former vice president of the Transitional Council, the first political and legislative body to be established after the outbreak of protests against Muammar Gaddafi’s rule in 2011, absolved the Electoral Commission of responsibility for postponing the elections.
Ghoga said in a press statement, “The statement that it issued about the reasons, including judicial ones, showed that many appeals were not resolved in a legal manner, and there were no reasons issued by the courts until the Commission could clarify with them the validity of its decision to exclude those it excluded from the presidential race.”
And he continued, “In general, these problems cannot be blamed on the commission, which everyone accuses of being responsible for,” considering that the elections were “cancelled and not postponed.”
At the level of international opinion on the future of the elections, the UN advisor, Stephanie Williams, spoke about the need for comprehensive national reconciliation in Libya before holding the presidential elections.
“Libyans are looking forward to exercising their democratic rights, choosing their representatives, and renewing the legitimacy of the country’s national institutions,” she said, via tweets on Twitter, after a virtual meeting with a number of mayors from different regions of Libya.
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