All those who know Libya have been predicting it since the beginning of December: the presidential election, scheduled for December 24, would not take place. Except that no one wanted to decide to take responsibility for the postponement: the country is deeply divided and the different political bodies do not recognize each other. They therefore pass on the mistigri.
At 48 hours before the ballot, the Libyan High Electoral Commission, based in Tripoli, the capital in the West, ended up assuming its responsibilities by proposing Wednesday, December 22 a postponement of one month. The ball is now in the court of the Parliament based in Tobruk, in the east, which does not deem the electoral commission legitimate. Nothing says that it will validate the date of January 24.
In any case, the ballot scheduled for December 24 could not take place. First, for technical reasons: the list of candidates – 98 on the starting line – has not been published. Then the ballots are not printed. Finally, the security of the ballot boxes is not guaranteed, to say the least. But there is even more serious: the political, legal and constitutional reasons. In fact, there is no electoral law recognized by all and no more constitutional basis for voting. In other words: the distribution of powers is not defined between a future president and a future assembly. There is a high risk that the losers will not recognize their defeat.
The risk, in the short term, is to see the situation degenerate. Libya has been mired in chaos for ten years and the international intervention that led to the death of General Gaddafi. And she can stay there. First, because the main factions and the main candidates are at loggerheads. In the South, in Sebba, clashes have already opposed in recent days the supporters of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi – the son of the former dictator – and those of Marshal Haftar, the strongman of the east of the country. While in Tripoli, the capital in the west, armed groups loyal to Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah, another candidate, took to the streets. Let us add powerful local militias, for example in Misrata.
There is no central state, no legitimate authority in Libya. Not to mention that the country has become a proxy war ground for outside powers: Turkey and Qatar on the government side of Tripoli, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates behind Marshal Haftar.
The postponement of this presidential election is also a failure for Westerners: they were keen on, France in the lead, to maintain the vote of December 24, confirmed at an international conference in Paris in November while, obviously, the ballot seemed impossible to organize. The subject is now back on the table of the UN envoy, the American Stephanie Williams. She will have to seek a new compromise, a new date, perhaps by calling the presidential and legislative elections the same day.
In the meantime, the stuffing turkeys are the Libyans themselves. They had massively withdrawn their electoral card, with the hope of finally expressing themselves in this vote on December 24, which looked like a Christmas present. There has never been a free presidential election since the country’s independence 70 years ago.