2min chapter

Hold Your Fire! cover image

Libya: Political Gridlock, Regional Politics and Sudan’s War

Hold Your Fire!

CHAPTER

Bertili's Plan for Elections in Libya

Dula Hebatili has a new roadmap for Libya. There are three main ways to think of exit strategies from the political crisis, he says. One is negotiation of a new government which is what the UN did when Beaba came to power. The second is constitutional reform setting out a new constitution that was never voted upon and then on the basis of that framework we can finally have elections with well-defined powers in parliament.

00:00
Speaker 2
As you say I mean, to Beaba he came to power what two years ago now is that right?
Speaker 1
Yes, yes exactly two years ago. He was supposed to stay in power only for nine months but has been around two years, has been very able to survive.
Speaker 2
So he was elected as a sort of interim, someone who would hold the fort until elections and he's still there. And that sort of brings us to the UN roadmap. There's a new envoy special representative, the Secretary-General, Dula Hebatili and he has a new roadmap for Libya. And in essence there are sort of a number of different ways that could have gone. I mean you could have as you said you could have worked on a unity government, tried to pursue this presumably this half-dab the Beaba track. You could have maybe gone for some sort of constitutional reform setting out, new constitution for Libya which has been in the works for a while or you could try to push for elections and Bertili has gone for the latter. Do you want to sort of say what that plan entails and why you think he's pushed for elections?
Speaker 1
So Bertili was appointed last October. He spent a few months consulting with the Laveria-Slibian stakeholders and foreign capitals as well, after which he presented in February, the end of February to the UN Security Council his plan. And he told security council members that he will support elections in Libya. He proposed to break a deadlock over the negotiations on election laws and the electoral framework by appointing a panel, what she called high-level steering panel for elections. And he proposed to have elections by the end of this year. The reason why he went for this election first approach is because you know when you look at Libya over the years that there are three main ways to think of exit strategies from the political crisis. There is the negotiation of a new government which is what the UN did when Beaba came to power. There is the constitutional track saying well before we have elections we need to first finalize a draft constitution that was never voted upon and then on the basis of that constitutional framework we can finally have elections with well-defined powers for the president of the parliament.

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