TRIPOLI, Libya: Calls for a boycott and other unrest on the eve of Libya’s first vote since the overthrow of longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi raised fears of election violence, even as campaigning came to an end yesterday for a contest seen as a milestone on the country’s rocky path toward democracy.
Today's election of a 200-member transitional parliament caps a messy nine-month transition after a ruinous 2011 civil war that ended in October with the death of Qaddafi, whose four-decade rule left the country deeply divided along regional, tribal and ideological lines.
The parliament will elect a new transitional government to replace the one appointed by the National Transitional Council that led the rebel side during the eight-month war and held power in its aftermath.
Many in Libya’s oil-rich east feel slighted by the NTC-issued election laws, purportedly based on population, that allocate their region less than a third of the parliamentary seats, with the rest going to the western region that includes Tripoli and the sparsely-settled desert south. In what it called an attempt to defuse east-west tensions, the NTC decreed on Thursday that the new parliament will not be responsible for naming the panel that will draft a new constitution. Instead, the drafters will be directly elected by the public in a separate vote at a later date.
But this has not satisfied some in the east, who press for a boycott.
“We don’t want Tripoli to rule all of Libya,” said Fadallah Haroun, a former rebel commander in the east’s regional capital Benghazi.
Earlier this week, ex-rebel fighters and other angry protesters in Benghazi and in the nearby town of Ajdabiya attacked elections offices, setting fire to ballot papers and other voting materials.
Haroun said boycott supporters would take to the streets on election day to “prevent people from voting, because this is a vote that serves those who stole the revolution from us.” He said they would not take up arms but when asked how they would stop voters, he said, “We will see today.”
Many in the west are equally dissatisfied with the decree, saying it will undercut the authority of the new parliament.
“The National Transitional Council acts like a rooster with its head cut off,” said Yassar Al-Bashti, a candidate with the liberal Free Libyans Party. “They want to weaken the new parliament after their failures over the past months.”
The vote also will be a test of the strength of Islamist parties, which have gained influence in Libya and other nations following the ouster of authoritarian regimes run by strongmen like Qaddafi and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.
Libya tense ahead of vote today
