Libya’s troubled elections
As Libyan voters elect a constitutional assembly to draft a new constitution, the country remains ungovernable in the proliferation of armed militias.
Slightly more than a million Libyans went to some 3,800 polling stations Feb. 20 to elect 58 members of a constitutional assembly, or “committee of sixty” as it is called locally, which will draft the country’s first constitution since 1951. Voters chose from among 559 candidates purposely without political party representation, to help guarantee the independence of the elected body.
Nearly half of all registered voters were women, while the quota for women in the assembly was set at only six seats. The elections are based on a 1951 formula that divides the country into three regions — Tripolitania in the west, Cyrenaica in the east and Fezzan in the south — with each region allocated 20 seats. Such arrangements will prove to be a major hurdle in the future, once the elections are over and the results are in, because they further entrench division.
Despite there being 60 seats in the assembly, only 58 members will be elected because the two seats allocated to the Amazigh minority will not be contested due to that community’s boycott. The Amazigh do not believe the planned constitution — before it is even drafted — will guarantee their cultural and ethnic rights.
In July 2012, Libya elected representatives to the General National Conference (GNC), an interim legislature tasked mainly with drafting a constitution within a year. Since convening, however, the GNC has practically been paralyzed by infighting, corruption and threats by various militias forcing it to pass unpopular laws, such as the law of political isolation, aimed at purging former regime supporters from the bureaucracy. The GNC, filled with incompetent and corrupt members, has so far failed to deliver tangible results to increasingly disillusioned, frustrated and angry Libyans, pushing them deeper into disrepair. Despite recent demonstrations calling for the GNC to quit, the conference voted instead to extend its mandate until the end of the year and then tried to calm the situation by pledging earlier elections, by June 2014.
