The head of the High Electoral Commission in Libya, Imad al-Sayeh, said – today, Monday – that the commission had received threats if it published the final list of candidates for the presidential elections, which could not be held on December 24, and al-Sayeh’s statement came during a session of the parliamentary committee tasked with preparing a roadmap for the post-postponement. The election.
The head of the Electoral Commission stated – during a briefing before members of the House of Representatives in the eastern city of Tobruk – that the commission had excluded 25 candidates for the presidential elections, for not meeting the required conditions. Al-Sayeh added that the Ministry of Interior clashed with what he called a political and security reality that prevented it from fully securing the electoral process, and accused unnamed political parties of refusing to continue the electoral process.
Regarding the judicial rulings issued against some presidential candidates, the Libyan official said that the commission cannot override the final judicial rulings.
The biggest obstacle
Al-Jazeera correspondent in Tripoli, Ahmed Khalifa, stated that the head of the Electoral Commission highlighted, during the lengthy briefing he gave before the parliamentary committee, the major technical and legal obstacles that prevented the elections from taking place on time.
The reporter added that the tourist mentioned that among the most prominent of these obstacles is the Commission’s failure to receive the electoral laws (the President’s Election Law and the Parliamentary Elections Law) from the House of Representatives on time.
Al-Jazeera correspondent in Tripoli said that the head of the Electoral Commission mentioned that one of the most prominent obstacles that prevented the polls from taking place on time: the commission’s failure to receive the electoral laws from the House of Representatives on time.
And the Libyan News Agency reported that the head of the commission said that “the electoral process stopped at the stage of appeals, and we were unable to take the second step by announcing the list of candidates.” Al-Sayeh pointed out that “the process of scrutinizing the files of the candidates encountered confusion … and we detected a huge fraud in the lists of nominations for candidates in the presidential elections, which amounted to 12 files.”
The House of Representatives formed a committee after the failure to hold the presidential elections on time, and assigned it to prepare a road map for the stage after postponing the polls and getting out of the current political impasse.
The inability to hold the elections last month came as a result of differences between official Libyan institutions, especially regarding the electoral laws and the role of the judiciary in this entitlement.
After the polls could not be held, the Electoral Commission suggested holding it on the 24th of this month, but no specific date has been agreed upon until now.
Parliamentary Committee
The Parliamentary Committee met yesterday with the Supreme Council of State in order to listen to all opinions and proposals, in order to get out of the political impasse resulting from the failure to organize the elections.
It is expected that the parliamentary committee will meet with members of the Constitution Drafting Assembly to discuss the reasons that prevented the draft constitution from being submitted to a popular referendum, in addition to the possibility of reconvening the Constitutional Drafting Assembly in the event that any amendments are requested.
The head of the parliamentary committee in charge of drawing up the road map, Nasr El-Din Muhanni, said that developing a clear and practical map will only be achieved with the participation of all political decision-makers, and communication with the influential in this decision.
The Libyans hope that the presidential and parliamentary elections will contribute to ending the armed conflict that has afflicted their oil-rich country, and ending the political and security division between the east and west of the country in the past years.