The Libyan High Electoral Commission had postponed the presidential election scheduled for December 24, 2021 two days before the polls were held. An obvious decision in the eyes of observers, as the difficulties accumulated. The High Electoral Commission had, in the process, proposed to postpone it to January 24. But Parliament did not ratify this date. The commission responsible for monitoring the elections presented a report concluding that it would be risky to set a new date at this stage, leaving the future of the election unclear.
In fact, the parliamentary committee has proposed to rethink everything, to set up a “new realistic and applicable roadmap, defining its stages, instead of setting new dates and making the same mistakes”. Among these errors, the High Electoral Commission never managed to publish the final list of candidates, stifled by repeated appeals to cancel contested candidacies. It must be said that some were divisive to say the least.
Among the controversial applicants were the outgoing Prime Minister Adhelhamid Dbeibah, who had promised not to run, and the strongman of eastern Libya, Marshal Khalifa Haftar, author of an abortive offensive in 2019 to conquer Tripoli. There was also Seif al-Islam Kadhafi, son of the former dictator whom many prevented from competing.
According to the director of the High Commission, Imad al-Sayeh, “twenty-four hours after the opening of the filing of appeals against decisions to exclude candidates, 26 appeals had been lodged “. Lack of time, “justice has examined the remedies and appeals only on the form, not on the substance”, explained to the deputies Imad al-Sayeh. The plethora of candidates didn’t help and again, it would have taken longer to ban fanciful candidates. “and reduce the number of candidates to twenty”.
The mistake was also to think that the security question was settled. However, this is not the case, the polling stations could not be secured, while armed militiamen have sporadically reappeared in the streets of Tripoli. Or that others have blocked access to the Sebha court to prevent, in vain, the lawyers of Seïf al-Islam Gadhafi from appealing the rejection of his candidacy.
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The ultimate mistake is perhaps to have wanted at all costs to organize this election, even though the country does not have a constitution! Under pressure from the West, it was necessary to find a unifying character who silenced the divisions in order to rebuild the country.
But the conditions for “free and fair elections are not held, the Libyans being too divided to accept or agree on the results “, said Jamal Benomar, former Under-Secretary-General of the UN and president of the International Center for Dialogue Initiatives, to AFP.
The time for negotiations has therefore returned. Libyan Interim Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah has returned to his post but it is not known for how long. Because the mandate of the transitional government theoretically ended on December 24 with the presidential election. The fog has fallen on Libya …