In Libya, while Prime Minister Fathi Bachagha won the confidence of parliament, several ministers were kidnapped. Meanwhile, the UN denounces "acts of intimidation" on the part of the Bachagha camp.
In a press release, the spokesman for the Secretary General of the United Nations considers "doubtful" the vote of the Libyan House of Representatives (HoR), which validated, on Tuesday, the government presented by the Prime Minister that this same parliament had designated a few weeks earlier, Fathi Bachagha.
“The vote failed to meet standards of transparency and procedure. There were acts of intimidation before the session, ”assured Stéphane Dujarric on Wednesday.
For her part, the UN special representative, Stephanie Williams, announced that she had summoned the head of the HoR, Aguila Salah, and the president of the Senate, Khaled al-Michri, to start talks.
Despite the UN mistrust, Bachagha tried to advance his pawns: he was sworn in before the HoR this Thursday, March 3 and succeeded in gaining the confidence of Parliament when presenting his government.
However, the first hiccups punctuated the beginnings of the Libyan government. The newly appointed Economy Minister, Jamal Shaaban, finally declared that he would not join the new government, "due to doubts about the voting process", according to him.
On Thursday morning, Bachagha's office also said that three ministers had been kidnapped while trying to reach Tobruk by road. Among them, future Ministers of Culture and Foreign Affairs, former Libyan Ambassador to Italy Hafed Gaddour and Salha al Drouqi, the only woman in the Bachagha government.
With ten ministers absent from the swearing in on Thursday, March 3, it is difficult to know who the third minister removed is.
Bachagha accuses Dbeibah
The convoy of two of the ministers-designate was ambushed in the city of Misrata, the hometown of the two rival heads of government - the outgoing prime minister who is seeking to keep his place, Dbeibah, and his successor appointed by parliament, Bachagha. The Joint Armed Forces of Misrata (MJTF), a militia funded by the government to the tune of 20 million euros on February 20, claimed responsibility for the attack.
MJTF soldiers are known for their opposition to Khalifa Haftar, the eastern strongman and ally of Aguila Salah and Fathi Bachagha. They had participated, alongside Turkish forces and militias from Tripolitania, in an operation to repel Haftar's attack on Tripoli in 2019.
For his part, Fathi Bachagha directly accuses Abdel Hamid Dbeibah of "using force" to "try to prevent his taking the oath". He also accused, on Wednesday, the current Prime Minister of having closed Libyan airspace in order to prevent the new ministers from landing in Tobruk in time for the swearing-in ceremony on Thursday.
Read: Libya: when Bachagha thinks he is Bismarck
Dbeibah's new allies
Abdel Hamid Dbeibah, for his part, said the HoR had "conspired to impose a new government, in order to keep itself in power". "The approval process for this government is fabricated," laments Dbeibah, who assures that he "will remain in place until the holding of legislative elections in June".
“What is happening is that the state authorities have been given to a party that has been involved in bloodshed and killings, and which waged war against Tripoli in 2019. Those who are accustomed to war cannot live without it. They only understand the language of arms. They cannot stop, not even by a military defeat, because such a defeat can make them want to come back in a violent way, which will end up leading to the same failure”, insisted the outgoing Libyan Prime Minister. A barely veiled allusion to Khalifa Haftar, who supports Bachagha.
But Dbeibah and the UN are no longer the only ones to denounce irregularities in the process of the Bachagha government's vote of confidence. An influential and very discreet figure in Libya also made a public announcement: Ali Abou Sbeiha, the chief of the Fezzan tribes.
According to Abou Sbeiha, "apart from supporting or rejecting competing Dbeibah or Bachagha governments or violating the political roadmap and disenfranchising the Fezzan, the House of Representatives (HoR) failed to establish the quorum required by its rules of procedure, which is 88 members”.
The tribal leader indeed recalls that only 82 parliamentarians gave their confidence to the Bachagha government on Tuesday, contrary to the declarations of the HoR which affirmed that 92 deputies had in favor of this same government.
As a reminder, the tribes of Fezzan, a region martyred by the ANL of Khalifa Haftar, supported, during the abortive presidential election last December, the son of Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam.