Does the Supreme Council of State accept the Libyan entitlement law?
Political tensions escalated in Libya over the expected entitlement, while Abdullah Batili, the UN envoy to the country, urged the “Supreme Council of State” to abandon its position rejecting the amendments recently introduced by the “6 + 6” committee to the electoral laws.
In the face of these tensions, politicians wondered about the possibility of the Supreme Council of State accepting Batelli’s invitation, which considered that the former’s adherence to his position threatened to “obstruct” the electoral process.
In defense of his council, Omar Khaled Al-Obaidi, the second vice-president of the Supreme Council, saw that Batelli’s call for the council to change its position on the two election laws, in which it relies on a constitutional text, “bears a degree of contradiction.”
Al-Obaidi spoke about the fact that the UN envoy himself “reserves a number of points included in the two election laws approved by the House of Representatives, and demands that they be addressed, meaning that he reserves the right to object to them.”
In a statement to Asharq Al-Awsat, he attributed “Batili’s attempt to place the responsibility for obstructing the elections on the Supreme Council of State, due to his awareness of the rejection he faced of his UN proposal to launch a negotiating process on the election laws.”
Regarding the reasons for not dealing with the UN proposal, Al-Obeidi believed that “Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aguila Saleh, and the leadership of the National Army refused to have their representatives sit with the representatives of the Prime Minister of the Interim National Unity Government, Abdul Hamid Al-Dabaiba.”
Al-Obeidi called on the UN mission to “play its role in supporting the convergence of views between the (Representatives) and the (Supreme Council of State), to complete their agreements on the two election laws, instead of heading to other paths that complicate the crisis.”
Regarding his council’s movements in the coming period to resolve the crisis, he said: “The council intends, during its next session early next month, to reconstitute its delegation to the (6 + 6) committee, to include new figures more representative of the movements affiliated with the council, with the aim of negotiating with counterparts in the House of Representatives on the disputed points.” By the two laws.”
The Supreme Council dissolved the team represented by it in the “6 + 6” committee, and called on the concerned parties to resume discussing and addressing controversial issues with the two laws. In an effort to hold “comprehensive national” elections whose results are accepted by everyone.
Al-Obaidi concluded that his council’s objection to the amended version of the two laws was due to the fact that it included “allowing holders of second citizenship to run in the first round of the presidential race, and that the elections for the National Assembly in its two chambers, the House of Representatives and the Senate, did not coincide with the holding of the first round of the presidential elections.”
For nearly two years, the provisions relating to the candidacy of military personnel and those holding foreign nationality for the presidential elections have been the subject of tensions and disagreements between the “House of Representatives” and the “Supreme Council”, which has hindered moving forward towards holding elections.
On the other hand, the political analyst, Islam Al-Hajji, described the amendments made to the first version of the outcomes of the “6 + 6” committee that was approved in Bouznika, Morocco, as “not affecting the essence of the agreement.”
Al-Hajji said in a statement to Asharq Al-Awsat that “if the horizon for negotiations with the House of Representatives regarding amendments to the two laws is blocked, it is likely that the Supreme Court will resort to relying again on the appeal submitted by some of its members to the Supreme Court on the 13th Amendment to the Constitutional Declaration,” pointing out If the appeal is accepted, it will result in canceling the decision to form the “6 + 6” committee and its outcomes of electoral laws.
Al-Hajji downplayed the repercussions of the accusations leveled by Saleh and some members of the “House of Representatives” against the “Supreme Head of State,” Mohamed Takala, “of obstructing the electoral process, to keep the Dabaiba government in power,” and considered them “usual disputes, and they will not have much weight if a rapprochement occurs.” Viewpoints between the two chambers.
The political analyst stressed that all the points that Batelli described regarding the two laws as “politically controversial” “were clear to the support team of the UN mission that followed the committee’s consultations in Bouznika; However, he did not intervene to warn of the possibility of it causing controversy,” expecting that “those points will be used in the future to exert pressure with the aim of only holding legislative elections.”
Among the controversial points included in the two election laws from the mission’s point of view are the stipulation of a mandatory second round for the presidential elections, regardless of the votes the candidate obtains, and the link between the presidential and parliamentary elections, which makes the National Assembly elections dependent on the success of the presidential elections.
Tekala had announced his adherence to the first version of the presidential and parliamentary election laws announced by the “6 + 6” committee at the conclusion of its consultations in the Moroccan city of Bouznika last June, and his rejection of the amended version issued by the “House of Representatives” at the beginning of the same month, because the latter introduced amendments to it including It violates the 13th Amendment to the Constitutional Declaration, which stipulates that its outcomes are mandatory.
The post first appeared on aawsat.com