Anyone with even a scant understanding of the history of the current political turmoil in Libya could have foreseen that the optimism surrounding the elections in the country was doomed to collapse. This is what happened when the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for Dec. 24, 2021, were postponed for a month. One should not be surprised if the promised election suffers the same fate once again given that the postponement appeared to be the only outcome.
In pursuit of peace and stability in war-torn Libya, many regional and global initiatives were taken. The most prominent one was the U.N.-led effort to hold the election in December. To take the U.N.-led plan further, a three-member Presidential Council with Mohammad Younes Menfi as its head was elected in March 2021, while Abdul Hamid Mohammed Dbeibah was appointed as the interim prime minister to govern the country through the elections.
However, no headway could be made due to the absence of collective desire among different stakeholders. What further ensured the failure of the election process was that power was not divided between the parliament, the High National Elections Commission and the judiciary, which continued to exercise their right to outlaw each other. The candidature of Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of Libya’s toppled late leader Moammar Gadhafi, was rejected by the commission; however, the move was reversed by a local court. The same discord was witnessed in the Presidential Council and Cabinet, when the head of the Presidential Council sacked Libya's foreign minister and soon the decision was reversed by Dbeibah. It was also not clear if the election would be conducted under the law stipulated in the U.N.-backed agreement or if the parliament or the commission would have their own mechanism or authority to frame new electoral laws.
What cast further doubt over the prospect of the election was the absence of any blueprint for the post-election political evolution. It was unclear what powers Libyan Parliament Speaker Aguila Saleh would enjoy or whether it would be a federal or unitary government. Since the election was announced, the most common themes to arise on the electoral campaign have been the legality of the different provisions of electoral law and the authenticity of particular moves made by institutions such as the commission, the House of Representatives or the High Council of the State. The first victim of the legal ambiguity was the electoral process itself after Saleh, in a Facebook post on Sept. 12, 2021, ratified a new law called the “Presidential Vote Law” without prior consultation.
The first one to disregard the law was High Council Chairperson Khalid al-Mishri, while Dbeibah said that the new law was primarily designed to ease the nomination process for putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar for the post of president. Dbeibah himself, who had earlier promised not to contest the presidential election, has been accused of violating the electoral law by not quitting the office before the election.
Any political process needs to be well organized by a set of unambiguous laws that helps remove legal obstacles. Many believed that elections were the only resort, for all the wrong reasons, to end the stalemate. However, one should not ignore the fact that hastily forming a law in the pursuit of achieving a goal early brings further instability – and this is what happened. Even the high-profile meeting on Libya last October and November revolved solely around the presidential and parliamentary elections and didn't look into the mechanism or legal and constitutional obstacles standing in the way of free and fair polls.
Today, Libya is devoid of any such rule, which could have ensured the success of the ongoing political process. The new electoral laws themselves were a negation of the past electoral provisions, which were exemplified in the nominations of Khalifa Haftar and Seif al-Islam Gadhafi. Rampant corruption was also a catalyst in the failure of the electoral process as many of the cancellations and restorations of the nominations were reportedly done through large-scale bribes or under the influence of external powers.
The solution to the Libyan crisis does not lie in the election alone, the real challenge lies in persuading different disgruntled or defeated groups to accept the verdict and to seek their cooperation in the future political dispensation. The election will not solve the turmoil until the country's deep-rooted political, social, tribal and economic issues are addressed and a comprehensive legal mechanism is put in place to ensure a stable transition.
The proposed election was already a theatrical show and the new electoral laws were merely a means to inaugurate the leader of a particular choice. When the election system didn't exist, one had no clue about the differing powers of state agencies or institutions in the government; similarly, one has no clue how the Libyan people would receive the victory of Haftar versus another candidate who is associated with the previous regime.
Even full participation in the future election does not guarantee the acceptance of the verdict by the miscreants or militias who are dominating the country's political sphere. Some parties, especially those with militias, may announce their rejection of the verdict and many of the pro-Seif al-Islam tribal lords have already threatened to boycott the verdict if he is not elected.
Apart from the judicial and legal aspects of the electoral law, the issue of security is equally important. Currently, Libya does not seem to have any mechanism in the works to create a situation suitable for conducting the electoral process in which voters can cast their votes and the outcomes are assured to be accepted.
The security situation is so fragile that the prime minister cannot travel from the west to the east since Haftar holds full control over the east. In the 10 months since the formation of the Presidential Council, the situation on the ground remains unchanged and the country is as deeply divided as ever on all tribal, political, geographical, strategic, economic, ideological and cultural fronts – all of which have the potential to ruin any political initiative. The acting United Nations envoy to Libya, Stephanie Williams, spoke of 20,000 foreign forces and mercenaries in Libya not long ago, describing the situation as horrific.
Unless a robust election or institutional mechanism is put in place, no headway can be in terms of a successful political process. Until this step is taken, no progress will be made in bringing stability and national integrity to Libya.
