The Libyan High Electoral Commission (HNEC) proposed, Wednesday, December 22, to postpone by one month the presidential election initially set for December 24, shortly after a committee of the Parliament concluded in the“impossibility” to keep it on that date. “After consultation with Parliament, the High Electoral Commission proposes to postpone the first round of the election until January 24, 2022. Parliament will take responsibility for adopting the necessary measures to remove obstacles to the electoral process”, she announced in a press release.
“” After having consulted the technical, legal and security reports, we inform you of the impossibility of holding the election on the date of December 24, 2021 provided for by the electoral law “”
Al-Hadi al-Sghayer, head of the parliamentary committee responsible for monitoring the electionReport
Decade of chaos
Since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has failed to extricate itself from a decade of chaos, marked in recent years by the existence of rival powers in the east and west of the country. The December 24 election was to mark the culmination of a UN-sponsored political process to end this chapter of divisions and instability. After the ceasefire signed in October 2020 between camps in the East and the West, a new unified government was set up at the beginning of the year, at the end of a laborious process overseen by the UN, to manage the transition between now and the December 24 election. If the postponement of the poll had been no doubt for several days, against a background of persistent disagreements between rival camps and chronic insecurity, no official announcement had yet been made. No institution seemed willing to take the responsibility of formalizing such a postponement, the High Electoral Commission (HNEC) and the Parliament based in Tobruk (East), in conflict, each considering that it is up to the other to To do.
Show of strength
On Tuesday, December 21, armed militiamen were deployed in Tripoli, raising fears of a resumption of violence while a postponement of the election was looming. In a scene reminiscent of the conflict that raged at the gates of Tripoli until June 2020, vehicles armed with machine guns and a tank mobilized in a suburb of the Libyan capital. Schools and universities have been forced to close, and streets blocked with sand dams and guarded by armed men in khaki uniforms. The situation eased in the middle of the day with the reopening of most of the streets to traffic, according to an AFP correspondent on the spot, but the UN Support Mission in Libya (Manul) was said “concerned about the development of the security situation in Tripoli”.
Candidates
The main figures who ran for president are Gaddafi’s youngest son Seif al-Islam, Marshal Khalifa Haftar, a strong man from the East, and the current Prime Minister, businessman Abdelhamid Dbeibah. Heralding a possible recomposition of the political landscape, two leading presidential candidates from West Libya made an unprecedented visit to Benghazi on Tuesday. The influential ex-Minister of the Interior Fathi Bachagha and the former Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Meitig spoke with Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who controls de facto the east and part of the south of the country and maintains a bitter rivalry with the notables of the West.