In Libya, the High Electoral Commission (HNEC) finally announced the postponement of the presidential election, now scheduled in a month. Will this delay be sufficient to resolve all the problems inherent in the holding of the poll?
It was time ! On the evening of Wednesday, December 22, less than two days before the theoretical date of the presidential election in Libya, the HNEC finally announced the postponement of the poll. A decision taken by the bicameral parliamentary group for the organization of the elections, which met on Wednesday to deliberate definitively on what had become obvious to all.
"After consulting the technical, judicial and security reports, we are informing you of the impossibility of holding the elections on December 24, 2021", reads a letter from the head of the parliamentary committee for the monitoring of the election, Hadi al-Saghir, addressed to the president of the HNEC, Imad Sayah.
Suspension of the electoral process supported by the UN was expected for several weeks, against the backdrop of incessant arguments. In particular, the application of the electoral law and the eligibility of several controversial candidates. This postponement comes after months of preparations and negotiations, but also clashes in Libyan cities. During the various negotiations, new political alliances were formed.
Read: Libya, D-2: Haftar, Bachagha, Miitig… dangerous connections
If, on the one hand, Libyan media of all stripes agree that the candidacies of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Khalifa Haftar and Abdel Hamid Dbeibah were the main sources of tension, the UN is not changing His guns in the air: "The current mobilization of forces affiliated with different groups creates tensions and increases the risk of clashes which could degenerate into conflict," UNSMIL simply said in a statement yesterday. The United Nations thus minimizes the failure of Stephanie Williams and her many predecessors, blaming the armed factions.
And after?
The House of Representatives (HOR), whose leader Aguila Salah Issa unilaterally promulgated the electoral law last September, will therefore be responsible for resolving all the problems inherent in this election in just one month.
These deadlines are already untenable, especially since the same lower house of parliament will also be responsible for setting up a governance framework. It should be remembered that the head of the parliamentary committee for the elections, Hadi al-Saghir, had previously announced that the government of Abdel Hamid Dbeibah (GNU) would not be extended beyond December 24.
“We will not negotiate with the representatives of the United Nations on this issue. The presidency will remain as it is, as provided by law, but the government will not be reappointed after December 24, ”al-Saghir said last week.
To resolve the urgent problem of maintaining a government, the HOR has formed a committee of ten members, who will be responsible for preparing a roadmap to be presented before next Thursday. The decision came hours after the announcement of the postponement of the elections by the HNEC.
However, as regards the presidential election, the past weeks have shown the complexity of the matter: it will take much more than a simple postponement to hope for the organization of a real election within the deadlines imposed by the West.
Is there a state in Libya?
A report, published this Wednesday by the NGO Amnesty International, denounces the "climate of repression" which has surrounded recent months in Libya. The NGO confirms the kidnappings of activists, attacks by militias on state officials, attacks on journalists ... We must also remember the numerous court attacks, the water cuts that lasted for weeks, the assaults on electricity installations in Libya, the siege suffered by the GNU Prime Minister's office in Tripoli the day before yesterday… signs which show a total absence of the State.
On Monday, on the BBC, the former adviser to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Moroccan Jamal Benomar, said precisely that "the problem in Libya is that there is no state" and not "the holding, in emergency, rushed elections ”.
According to the polls, Libyans are 67% in favor of holding an election. But paradoxically, the election would not "solve the immediate problems of the Libyans", assures Benomar.
Should we then restart the process of military alliance between the armed factions - the 5 + 5 commission - and require them to agree to stick to the results of the ballot box, upstream? By imposing a premature date for the presidential election, the foreign powers have caused a delay in this search for consensus. A point, moreover, raised by the Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ramtane Lamamra, during the Summit of Libya's neighbors, and repeated many times by African diplomacy.
Which scapegoat for January?
Another problem, which has stirred in recent months: the presence of foreign forces. A simple question of perspective? For the West, it is the Turkish military instructors and the Russian paramilitaries who should step aside so that Libya suddenly becomes a peaceful country. Vladimir Poutine, for his part, considered NATO's intervention in Libya a medieval “crusade”. As for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the same United Nations, which today demand that its troops leave the Libyan West to its fate, were the same which had provided Ankara with its mandate to intervene in Libya. And on the side of the Arab countries, in particular Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the diplomatic war serves Libyan interests.
Despite everything, arms continue to flow into the country, which already has 15 million weapons of war for 7 million inhabitants.
Under European - especially French and German - and American pressure, the postponement of the election will therefore be short-lived. But all observers know it, a month won't be enough to set up a government, solve the puzzle of illegal candidacies and replace voter registration forms (thousands of which were stolen by militias from HNEC offices), among others.
According to the leader of the National Cooperation Party, Ahmed Mohammed al-Jedk, the HNEC and the parliament "take full responsibility for this electoral fiasco". For the politician, "setting a new date for the election is nothing more than an attempt to rush forward, leaving embarrassment behind and creating a new opportunity for conflict".