During the coming weeks, Libya will be gearing up for its first official municipal elections following the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime. In addition, in accordance with a decision by the ruling General National Congress, steps will be taken in the coming days to prepare for the elections of the commission responsible for drafting Libya's new constitution. On 15 April, the cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, approved the “rules and regulations for the municipal council elections” that were included in an appendix to Law 161/2013 which calls for the creation of a central electoral commission responsible for the organisation, administration and supervision of the elections and all measures necessary to ensure the integrity and fairness of the electoral process. The commission, which is officially called the Central Committee for the Preparation and Supervision of the Municipal Elections, is to be chaired by Otman Al-Gajiji and will consist of six other members, among whom is one woman. The committee will be exclusively focussed on these elections and operate under the supervision of the Minister of Local Government Abu Bakr Al-Hadi Mohamed Al-Hadi. Al-Gajiji, a computer and information technology expert, had been chosen by the former transitional national council to head the High Commission for Legislative Elections which supervised the polls that produced the current General National Congress (GNC) in July 2012. However, he resigned from that commission before those elections in protest against what he held were a number of shortcomings. A number of issues concerning the municipal elections remain unclear. On 10 March, during a seminar in Benghazi on the decentralisation of the Libyan state, First Deputy Prime Minister Awad Al-Barasi remarked that the first Municipal Council elections would be held in Al-Bayda under judicial supervision. He suggested that further such elections would be held successively in other Libyan towns and cities and the Tripoli would probably be the second. In addition, there has been some friction between the provisional government and the GNC over the local administration law. The chief bone of contention was whether governors and municipal chiefs should be elected by GNC representatives or directly by the people or appointed by the government. Observers and analysts anticipated heated controversy over this matter, especially between the liberal and Islamist camps. An instance of this occurred before with regard to Local Administration Law 59/2012. Under Article 26 of this law, municipal and governorate councils would be elected by direct secret ballot, after which these councils would elect the mayors and governors via indirect ballot. Since then, however, the Zeidan government introduced a bill to amend this article. According to its proposal, the municipal and governorate councils would still be elected by popular vote, but the heads of these councils would be appointed by the prime minister. The bill was supported by the National Forces alliance and some independent parties sympathetic to it, while it was opposed by the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood's political arm the Justice and Construction Party, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya Party and other Islamist forces. When the bill was put to a vote, the opposition prevailed with 120 votes against 80. The government and some of its political supporters had based their advocacy of the amendment on a number of arguments. They held that the Libyan people were still new to the democratic experience and that they feared that the local government electoral processes would become confused with the popular congresses system, that had prevailed under the Gaddafi regime. They also felt that the influence of locally dominant tribes would effectively void the electoral process of its fundamental substance. In addition, the amendment's supporters contended that subjecting mayors and governors to government supervision and oversight would be more optimally accomplished if these officials were appointed by government. Otherwise, whenever the government issued a directive they disapproved of or were reluctant to implement these officials would counter that they had been elected by their local municipal or governorate boards and directly accountable to them. Such a situation, they argued, would obstruct the wheels of government, hamper the pursuit of the interests of the people, and make the institutions of central government look weak and incapable of directing the affairs of the municipalities which, after all, were an extension of the executive authority. The political forces opposed to the amendment, particularly the Justice and Construction and the National Front parties, clearly feared the prospect of the Zeidan government's control over municipal and governorate councils. In their opinion, this would intensify tensions at the local levels due to the strains between centralisation and local government that would arise if the central government retained the authority to appoint the heads of locally elected councils. Some members of the GNC objected to the amendment less on the grounds of its substance rather than on the grounds of rumours regarding some of the Zeidan government nominations for governorate posts. These GNC members allege that some of those nominees are involved in cases of financial corruption. Officials in the Ministry of Local Government also voiced objections to the amendment bill. They held that the people should be given the freedom to elect their officials and that it was always better for them to bear the consequences of their own choice than to impose someone on them from above as they would only blame the central authorities for the mistakes of the government appointee.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS: On 17 April, the GNC adopted Resolution 30 of 2013 calling for the formation of a “committee to prepare a bill for the Constituent Body charged with drafting the permanent constitution of the country”. According to the resolution, the committee is to be headed by Councillor Suleiman Awad Zobi, who had chaired the committee for Banghazi municipal council elections last year. In addition to Zobi, the committee to prepare the Constituent Body bill will consist of two GNC representatives plus 15 other members, three of whom are women. The committee will be expected to complete its work within 45 days. The same day, the GNC, which is the highest legislative authority in Libya, amended Article 30 of the Provisional Constitutional Declaration so as to provide that “the GNC shall reconstitute the High Commission for the Election of the Constituent Assembly charged with drafting the constitution by means of free and direct vote by non-GNC members”. The amendment further stated that the constitutional assembly would consist of 60 members, in the manner of the “Committee of 60” that had been formed to draft Libya's first constitution after it won independence in 1951. This provision, which replaced a previous one that provided that the constitutional assembly would be elected by GNC members, came as a response to the widely voiced demand for the direct popular election of the members of the constituent body. Under the amendment, the GNC will be tasked with establishing the criteria and standards that are to govern the constituent body's members who “must represent all components of Libyan society”. The GNC declared that the decisions of the constitutional drafting body will be adopted by a two-thirds plus one majority vote and that the body will be expected to complete and approve the draft constitution within 120 days of its first meeting. The question of the Constituent Assembly was also the subject of some controversy. Some voiced the fear that partisan conflict, especially between liberal and Islamist forces, would mar the constitutional drafting process as rival political parties and groupings strove to dominate the activities of the assembly and tailor a constitution to their particular interests. They argued that the only way to avert such a scenario was to exclude political parties from the assembly. This appeal was probably inspired by the dismay at what happened in the case of the electoral law that governed the elections of the GNC members. Critics of that law have charged that partisan wrangling and manoeuvring had voided that law of all substance and led it to establish the worst electoral system in the world. Certainly, Libyans would not want to see this phenomenon repeated, especially when it comes to the committee charged with forming their new constitution.
