He had gone from reformer of the repressive regime of his father, Muammar Gaddafi, to muscular guardian of his dictatorship at the time of the Libyan revolution of 2011, promising at the time “rivers of blood” to the insurgents.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the second son of the “fiery colonel”, decided last Sunday to stand as a candidate to succeed him, during the presidential elections next December in Libya. A predictable and paradoxical candidacy after a decade of chaos and division which followed the failure of the Libyan spring: this other Gaddafi could as much contribute to reuniting the country as compromising the holding of an already strongly weakened poll.
“This candidacy, even if it was inevitable, represents a serious threat to the electoral process,” sums up in an interview Nathaniel Greenberg, professor in the Department of Arab Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi may be seen as a viable candidate, but his viability is in part fabricated by disinformation campaigns orchestrated by foreign influences who are not beholden to the Libyan people. “
At 49 years old, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi staged his return to political life on Sunday from Sebha, capital of the southern region of Fezzan, by donning the Bedouin turban and the brown abaya reminiscent of his father’s traditional outfit , assassinated after a fall orchestrated by the West 10 years ago. A script worked probably seeking to simplify an application whose complexity remains in the image of the chaos that has settled since 2011 in this country.
Several levels of uncertainty
It is because the son Gaddafi has been living for several years under house arrest after being sentenced to death in July 2015 by a special court in Tripoli for his participation in the repression carried out by his father’s regime against the popular movement of the Libyan spring. An amnesty law passed by the refugee parliament in Tobruk, in the east, dominated by forces loyal to Marshal Khalifa Haftar, effectively commuted his sentence to house arrest. This mechanism was intended in part to protect him from the faithful of the revolution and the Islamists in power in Tripoli, determined to reserve him the same fate as his father.
In a Libya still militarily and politically divided between the Cyrenaica region in the east and Tripolitania in the west, the legal status of Gaddafi’s son also places him in a territory of uncertainty due to the international arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “crimes against humanity”. And this, for his role in the violent repression of 2011.
“In recent years, he has found himself at the heart of disinformation campaigns aimed at exalting his return to power by defending his resistance to the ICC and portraying it as the victim of Western interference,” Greenberg said. Campaigns fueled in part by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia, in order to restore the image of this strong figure of the old regime and stir up nostalgia for the Gaddafi. Still numerous in the country, they began to regret, faced with the political and economic slump of recent years, the balance of power that the “Guide of the Jamahiriya” and his regime of terror maintained for more than 40 years.
Cultivated dichotomy
On Tuesday, the Libyan political theater saw a second contender for the leading role enter the stage of the December presidential election, with the expected and confirmed candidacy of Khalifa Haftar. The strong man of the east is also seeking to conquer power through the ballot box after his resounding failure in June 2020 to do so by arms. He had been unable to take Tripoli and the seat of government recognized by the UN and supported militarily by Turkey.
Much like Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the former Marshal at the head of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army (ANL) has authoritarian leanings that contradict the democratic electoral process that Western countries seek to set up in Libya .
“Libya is today at a turning point: either it opts for freedom and independence, or for corruption and chaos,” Haftar said on Tuesday before going before the High Electoral Commission (HNEC) to formalize his candidacy. However, according to Wolfram Lacher, an expert on Libya at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) cited by Agence France-Presse, the forces led by Haftar “are by far the main perpetrators of crimes. war since 2014 and they could use violence to influence the elections ”.
“The December election should go ahead, believes Nathaniel Greenberg, but will it be recognized as legitimate and accepted by all parties? That’s another story “. He added: “At the Paris Summit last week, the international leaders present pledged to sanction any foreign actor who would try to disrupt the electoral process in Libya. And that’s what it takes, because without a mechanism to discourage foreign disinformation, there cannot be a peaceful transition in this country ”. And this, with another Gaddafi, or not.