Libya requires a constitution before the delayed presidential and parliamentary elections can take place, the country's interim Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Mohammed Dbeibah said on Sunday.
"Now more than ever we need a constitution that protects the country and its citizens, and that governs the elections," Dbeibah told a symposium in the capital Tripoli titled: "The constitution first."
Libya collapsed into years of violence after the 2011 overthrow and killing, during a NATO-backed revolt, of dictator Moammar Gadhafi who scrapped the country's constitution in 1969.
The unrest lead to rival power bases and administrations arising in the country's east and west.
After a landmark cease-fire in 2020, a United Nations-led process saw elections scheduled for Dec. 24 last year, but the polls were postponed after months of tensions, including over divisive candidates and a disputed legal framework.
Libyans "want free elections that respect their will, not the extension of the crisis with a new transition," Dbeibah said.
"Our problem today is the absence of a constitutional base or of a constitution," he added.
The event brought together high-profile figures from Libya's west including Khalid al-Mishri, who heads the High Council of State – a Tripoli-based body that is equivalent to Libya's senate and rivals the House of Representatives in the eastern city of Tobruk.
"Certain parties have worsened the crisis" with "tailor-made" laws favoring certain candidates over others, Dbeibah charged, referring to House of Representatives speaker Aguila Saleh's September decision to ratify a contentious electoral law.
Critics said the move bypassed due process and favored a bid by Saleh's ally, eastern-based putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar.
Dbeibah, Saleh and Haftar all put their names forward for the presidential vote.
An official from the elected commission in charge of drafting a new constitution, Daou al-Mansouri, told Sunday's symposium that the body had in July 2017 submitted a draft constitution to the House of Representatives.
The draft was supposed to be put to a referendum, which has never been organized.
Saleh on Tuesday proposed establishing a new commission of Libyan and foreign experts to draw up a new draft constitution.
He also called for a new interim government to be established, and said that by the end of January, a "definitive" date for the postponed polls needed to be set.
Meanwhile, a group of 62 Libyan parliamentarians reiterated their support to Dbeibah's unity government.
An initiative unveiled by the lawmakers on Sunday called for an agreement between Libya's legislative and executive authorities in a bid to end the current political impasse in the country.
The lawmakers also called to hold parliamentary and presidential elections "at the earliest possible time."
Dbeibah, a business tycoon, took leave as the head of a unity government to contest the elections. His administration is based in the capital Tripoli and was tasked with leading the North African country to the ballot box.
Libya's House of Representatives in December deemed the vote, meant to bring an end to the years of conflict in the North African nation, "impossible" to hold on time.
The poll was meant to take place just over a year after a landmark east-west cease-fire in a country that has been ravaged by a decade of conflict since the 2011 revolt that overthrew dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
But the run-up to the country's first-ever presidential election has been overshadowed by angry disputes over its legality and the candidacies of several controversial figures, including Gadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi.
One point of contention was the presidential elections law controversially passed by Saleh, which critics say bypassed due process and favored his ally, Haftar.
The law was strongly opposed by factions in western Libya, where Haftar had waged a yearlong battle to seize Tripoli.
The delay is also embarrassing for the United Nations, which piloted the October 2020 cease-fire and initiated a dialogue process intended to help stabilize the country.
U.N. envoy Jan Kubis quit just a month before the polls, and American diplomat Stephanie Williams was appointed as the U.N. secretary-general's special adviser on Libya.
