Libya | High-risk presidential election waves through Canada

The campaign for the presidential election supposed to take place in Libya on December 24 is making waves in Canada.

Agnes Gruda
The press

One of the three main presidential candidates, current Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah, is accused of fabricating the master’s degree in civil engineering he claims to have obtained in 1992 at the University of Toronto.

Three years earlier, the same institution would have awarded him an undergraduate degree, also in engineering.

It was a Libyan activist, Husam El Gomati, who launched the accusation of a doctored diploma on social networks. The University of Toronto took several days last week to search its archives for a trace of Mr. Dbeibah’s passage.

As Arabic names are often spelled in more than one way, the university has attempted to locate this alleged student under at least six transliterations. She never found it.

“We searched our records and found no entry matching the information you submitted to us,” the university said in an email sent last Friday.

The institution does not go so far as to say that Mr. Dbeibah has never sat in his classrooms. Only that he found no proof of his presence.

Serial controversies

While the affair has caused a stir in Libya, it is unlikely to change the course of a non-controversial election campaign.

The list of candidates has 98 names. The three leading candidates are all dragging skeletons in their suitcases. And no matter which of the three wins the vote in the second round, their victory risks plunging the country into chaos.

After years of civil war, Libya has experienced relative calm since the ceasefire concluded on October 20, 2020. But this fragile peace risks being shattered with political camps that do not recognize their mutual legitimacy.

“There is a risk that a faction will claim to have won while the others will dispute the legitimacy of its victory, which could lead to an explosion of violence”, predicts Claudia Gazzini, specialist on Libya within the International Crisis Group, an organization specializing in the study and prevention of conflicts.

“To avoid this scenario, it would be good to postpone the election,” she said.

With four days to go to the vote, there is no sign of an election campaign on the ground, and several observers believe the vote will simply not take place.

“There is no one who wants this election, it will not take place,” says Iman Bughaigis, an orthodontist who had been very involved in the movement of revolt against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, in Benghazi, in the spring of 2011.

But the early protesters were quickly overtaken by rebel groups who seized the arms stores of the overthrown Libyan dictator.

M’s sister^me Bughaigis, lawyer Salwa Bughaigis, was assassinated in June 2014. Iman Bughaigis then fled his country with his family. She has since taken refuge in Portugal, from where she follows this electoral campaign from which she expects nothing good.

“None of them are really ready to build a state. ”

The son, the marshal and the prime minister

The most notable candidacy is that of Saif al-Islam Kadhafi, son of the former dictator who ruled Libya for more than 40 years and who was assassinated in October 2011.

Arrested and brought to justice by the rebels, Saif al-Islam was released in 2016. His image as a reformer was damaged by the hard line he adopted during the civil war of 2011. He is now wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.

How can a man associated with an implacable dictatorship hope to generate enough support to run for the presidency of his country, 10 years after the fall of the old regime?

For many Libyans who grew up after the fall of Gaddafi, the years that followed were a source of disillusionment, observes Claudia Gazzini.

Nostalgia for a bygone era and the fact that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who is in his late fifties, has been out of the Libyan political scene for a decade is working in his favor.

One of his two main adversaries, Khalifa Haftar, 78, is a soldier who first fought Muammar Gadhafi and then founded his own army in eastern Libya. He also led a sort of unrecognized government in Tobruk, near the border with Egypt.

In 2019, he called for an offensive against the Libyan capital, Tripoli. A Canadian national from Libya is suing Marshal Haftar in US courts for crimes committed during an offensive against Benghazi in eastern Libya.

His opponents believe that Marshal Haftar is not admissible, since in addition to his Libyan nationality, he is also a citizen of the United States.

Abdelhamid Dbeibah’s candidacy is contested because he currently serves as prime minister, which gives him an unfair advantage, according to his opponents. “He campaigns with money from the national bank, he distributes money to get elected,” laments Iman Bughaigis.

“Khalifa Haftar and Saif al-Islam want elections only if they win them”, she sums up.

And then, icing on the cake, there is this story of possible false diplomas.

The candidacies of these three men were all contested and then validated by courts or the Electoral Commission.

Geographical divisions

What complicates this election, which may not take place, is that the allegiances of the three main candidates are determined by the regions where they find their support. Khalifa Haftar, in the east of the country. Abdelhamid Dbeibah, in the region of the capital Tripoli, in the west, and Saif al-Islam, especially in the south.

All this while the electoral law, which was never voted by Parliament but adopted by decree, is widely contested.

The cocktail is explosive. And the election, sponsored by the UN which seeks to pacify Libya after a decade of deadly chaos, risks on the contrary plunging it back into a new cycle of violence.