THE multiple forces pulling Libya apart show no sign of losing their grip in this tragic country’s entrails. Under a deal brokered by the UN and backed by the US and the EU, there is supposed to be a referendum on a new constitution on Sept. 16 followed by parliamentary and presidential elections in December.
The president of the Tobruk-based House of Representatives, Ageela Saleh, was among the four key Libyan leaders who agreed in May to the electoral timetable proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron. The other three were Fayez Al-Sarraj, head of the internationally-recognized Presidency Council in Tripoli, Field-Marshal Khalifa Haftar, based in the east and the State Council’s Muslim Brotherhood President Khalid Al-Mishri.
Saleh promised the parliament would be debate the referendum law, without which the poll cannot take place, by the end of July. But Libya is as full of promises as cheating businesses and like common fraudsters, few if any of the promises are kept. Nothing happened in July. A reassurance parliament would vote on Aug. 12 was not honored. Then the vote was postponed until after Eid Al-Adha and parliament is unlikely to meet before Sept. 3. Even assuming it backs the law, which is by no means certain, if only because insufficient legislators turn up, holding the referendum just over a fortnight later seems impossible.
Under the existing post-revolutionary Constitutional Declaration of 2011, parliament can merely approve or reject but not amend any draft constitution. Yet among legislators from the east of the country are worried the current draft provides for excessive centralization which would marginalize the strong identity of their power base in Cyrenaica. They have thus tabled an amendment requiring a two-thirds majority in each of Libya’s three historic regions, Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan. If the threshold is not passed in one region, the vote will fail in all. General Hafter, commander of the Libyan National Army in the east has backed the proposed constitution, perhaps in the certainty that it will never make its way through parliament. But it is not just tribalism that makes Cyrenaica so suspicious of the deal. The Muslim Brotherhood-dominated State Council in Tripolitania backs the new constitution and wants early legislative and presidential votes in part because, with its secret networks and militias, it remains the country’s best organized political grouping.
The head of the international-backed Presidency Council (PC) Faiez Serraj is apparently in favor of the new constitution because he believes that in the subsequent elections, with UN backing, he can win the presidency. But for many analysts Serraj is a cipher whose tenuous hold on the capital Tripoli exists only as long as the local Muslim Brotherhood militias choose it to. It would be no different if he were formally elected to the presidency.
Libya’s tragedy is that in large measure it is an artificial geographical construct of the former colonial powers, Turkey and Italy. The south is riven by rivalries between Arabs, Tebu and Tuareg and the west between Amazigh (Berber) and Arabs. The three minorities have largely rejected the proposed constitution with the Amazighs refusing from the outset to take part in the drafting. After four years of chaos and carnage, many Libyans now look back nostalgically to the albeit eccentric, arbitrary and sometimes brutal rule of the late dictator Qaddafi.
