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With just one week to go before the official date scheduled for the presidential election, Libya remains plunged in uncertainty: The final list of candidates has yet to be published and the electoral calendar seems untenable.
The campaign for the presidential election in Libya has still not kicked off, though 2.5 million voters are supposed to go to the polls on December 24, and the publication of the official list of candidates, expected at least 15 days before the election, was postponed indefinitely on December 11 by the High National Electoral Commission (HNEC).
The Libyan election was intended to be the culmination of a lengthy UN-sponsored political process, after a decade of chaos that followed the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, and fratricidal struggles between two rival camps, in the west and east.
With just a few days until the original election date, the new elections law, passed in September, still does not enjoy unanimous support in the country. The text of the new law was not passed by the parliament, but instead was ratified directly by Aguila Saleh Issa, speaker of the Libyan House of Representatives and an ally of one of the main candidates, Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who controls the east and part of southern Libya.
The divisive law was notably rejected by several political forces who accused it of being tailor-made for Haftar, as it allows him to be a presidential candidate but also to return to his military post if he is not elected.
These factors contribute to a state of confusion in the country, suggesting that the electoral calendar, which also provides for legislative elections in January (initially planned for December), will not be respected. A postponement is now more than likely, although the Libyan government claimed as recently as last Sunday that it was “ready” to…
Source : france24
