The two candidates in the Libyan presidential election, scheduled for December 24, who declared themselves in 48 hours, send back a little scent of nostalgia for the dictatorship in this country of seven million inhabitants ravaged by civil war for ten years and the fall of Colonel Gaddafi.
The latest to enter the dance is Marshal Haftar, the strongman of the eastern part of the country, Cyrenaica. Two years after failing to conquer power by force, Khalifa Haftar, aged 77, therefore declared himself a candidate on the morning of November 16, in a speech broadcast on television in which he said he wanted “lead the Libyan people to glory and prosperity”. Many believe he intends to reestablish a military dictatorship.
This announcement comes less than 48 hours after the even more controversial one of Saif al Islam Gaddafi, one of the sons of the deposed colonel and killed in 2011 after the international intervention led by France. Saif al Islam, 49, came out of the woods on Sunday in an announcement made from his house arrest in Zinten, in the south of the country. Even though he was sentenced to death six years ago and remains under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for “crimes against humanity”. Here again, it smacks of the return of the men of the old system.
The list of candidates will not stop there: we are expecting in particular the head of the current interim government, Abdlehamid Dbeibah, and the President of the Presidential Council, Mohammed al Menfi. As many men in strong rivalry and above all as many men who are the incarnations of competitive political bodies and who do not recognize each other.
For example, the High Council of State based in Tripoli to the west does not want to hear from the House of Representatives based in Benghazi to the east. It is precisely this institutional chaos that can favor the candidacies of strong men, likely to appear as recourse in a country plagued by disenchantment and corruption.
The organization of this ballot therefore promises to be very complicated and the international conference on the subject organized by France on Friday 12 November did not remove the uncertainties. It is still not known whether this presidential election will be accompanied by legislative elections, nor what will be the institutional distribution of powers after the vote. As for the practical organization of the ballot, it could fall under the impossible mission: how to prevent fraud, check the electoral lists, avoid blockages of polling stations. The powerful militias of the city of Misrata have already announced their intention to boycott the ballot, in opposition to the candidacy of the son Gaddafi.
To make matters worse, foreign powers continue to play puppeteers. Egypt and the Emirates support Marshal Haftar, Russia is suspected of pushing the candidacy of Gaddafi’s son. And Turkey will inevitably support another candidate. A little over a month before the election, this is an election that is very badly embarked on. In fact, Libya remains fundamentally divided into tribal and militia structures, incompatible with the very notion of a central state.