In a sudden turn of events in Libya, the liberal-oriented National Forces Alliance (NFA) decided to withdraw its support from the Ali Zeidan government, which came to power in November 2012. Speaking at a conference in Tripoli Friday, the chairman of the Higher Steering Committee of the NFA, Abdel-Majid Mleqta announced that the alliance, the chief bolster of the Zeidan government during the past year, would be looking, together with other partners, for an alternative government that would be more capable of handling “the grave challenges that Libya is facing at this time.” Mleqta held that the Zeidan government had proven incapable of managing the current phase and had to go. “It is too slow in responding to the urgent issues in Libya today,” he said, referring to the economic crisis created by the blockade of oil exporting ports in northeast Libya. The blockade was organised by a contingent of advocates of a federal system from Cyrenaica, led by Ibrahim Al-Jadran. Mleqta criticised the remarks issued by the prime minister last week regarding the likelihood that Libya may be forced to borrow from the World Bank due to the drop in oil production and the decline in the sole source of revenue for the national treasury. He accused the prime minister of supporting the federalist drive and of “clear negligence” in handling the deteriorating security conditions in the country. The chairman of the NFA steering committee also charged that Zeidan had become “a new dictator” in Libya. “He takes important and grave decisions on his own and he relies entirely on foreign powers to run the country, without consulting his partners at home, which is cause for suspicion.” Prime Minister Zeidan clearly came to rely on the large support that his government received from the West, and the US, EU, Britain and France in particular. He made frequent trips abroad without notifying the General National Congress (GNC), the highest political authority in Libya. Sources in the GNC, who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly on condition of anonymity, agreed that Zeidan had begun to act as a dictator, “indifferent to the GNC, its members and even the Libyan people”. This was why the GNC had to withdraw its support from his government. One source complained that Zeidan was “too evasive” when asked for clarification on certain issues. He said that the prime minister has yet to respond to the GNC's request for information on what transpired in the Paris conference on security in Libya, which took place in February. The GNC had not been informed in advance of the prime minister's intention to attend the conference, and was surprised to discover that he had. Although grievances against the Zeidan government have been building up during the past year, the NFA's sudden announcement threw the Libyan political scene into confusion. The largest political bloc in the GNC, the NFA had remained until recently a strong backer of the interim government. Not even the GNC bloc controlled by the Justice and Construction Party (JCP), the political wing of the Libyan chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, had managed to engineer the government's fall, in spite of the harsh criticisms it had levelled against it since the moment Zeidan took office. Although Mleqta was quick to deny rumours circulating on Libyan social networking websites to the effect that the NSA and the JCP had secretly agreed to bring down the Zeidan government, this is the first time that the liberal and Islamist blocs see eye-to-eye on a central issue. Both, now, believe that the Zeidan government must step aside in order to make room for others who will be more effective in halting the rapid political, security and social deterioration in the country. But even with the NFA's withdrawal of support, could Zeidan ride out the crisis? His opponents in the GNC will need to rally 120 votes in order to force his government to stand down, but the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies failed to do this in the past. Of the 200 members in the GNC only 80 are affiliated with political parties. The remaining 120 were voted in as independents, even though many declared a political affiliation once they took their seats in the congress. Or will Zeidan read the message of the prevailing winds, now that he faces the opposition of the two largest GNC blocs, and step down voluntarily? As Libyans await the answer, many continued action in the streets. Benghazi and Derna saw renewed protests against the continued presence of militia groups in these cities. In these and other Libyan cities there were demonstrations calling for the fall of the Zeidan government or for the fall of both this government and the GNC. At the same time, speculation turned to possible contenders as Zeidan's replacement. During the past few days, the name of a young Libyan businessman recently returned from the US has surfaced as a likely candidate. Abdel-Baset Iqtit started out as a civilian airline pilot. In 2004, he founded a Swiss-based firm to manage commercial services for Qatar. In 2005-2006, his firm assisted a group of 12 German engineering companies to obtain contracts for architectural and civil engineering works in Qatar. In 2006, he founded a financial consortium in Switzerland and became an advisor to the Qatari Homes Company. In 2007, he became a co-owner of the Matrika Company for Maritime and Aviation Services, which is based in Germany. Currently, he is president of the Independent Libya Foundation (ILF), a recently founded civil society organisation that worked to collect donations for Libya during the revolution and also helped secure the recognition of a number of Western states for the revolution's National Transitional Council. One of those states was Panama, the president of which Iqtit met personally. The council had appointed Iqtit as a special envoy during the revolution. According to sources in the GNC, next week the GNC will discuss an action programme that Iqtit submitted as a proposal for what his government would do if he were elected to replace Zeidan. But while this may suggest a high probability of his becoming the next prime minister, a number of points are not in his favour. For one, he is clearly supported by the West and by the current prime minister, which raises suspicions among many, especially in light of his sudden appearance on the scene, and his Western business connections. Secondly, he is married to an American, which would not sit well with many Libyans due to concerns over conflicting loyalties. For the same reason there is the question of his dual citizenship, a question that had been a source of controversy with respect to Ali Zeidan as well. The crisis surrounding the oil-exporting ports and the federalist drive in Cyrenaica has been a chief cause of deteriorating support for the Zeidan government, and this crisis continues to play out. The Libyan government had given the so-called Political Bureau of the Region of Cyrenaica 10 days to lift the blockade on the ports so that the export of oil, stalled for months, could resume. The self-proclaimed Executive Bureau of Cyrenaica responded with an ultimatum of its own. It gave the Zeidan government a week to comply with a number of demands. A statement issued by that bureau stipulated that the government had to form a committee consisting of representatives of Libya's three provinces to oversee oil exports and to create a mechanism to ensure that petroleum revenues were handled in a way that guaranteed the rights of the people in all three provinces. The bureau reserved the right to appoint its own representatives to the committee. The statement also called for an independent investigation into oil thefts, bribery and other acts of corruption in the petroleum sector during the past period. Lastly, the statement warned that if the government failed to take these steps, the bureau would put into motion oil sales operations through the Libyan Organisation for Oil and Gas that the bureau had founded several weeks ago and appointed as its head Saleh Bouzeid Al-Mismari. The statement added that the oil sales would be undertaken in accordance with existing international agreements and current laws and regulations. The executive bureau would exercise Cyrenaica's rights to its share of the revenues in accordance with Law 58 that is based on the 1951 Libyan Constitution, and that it would safeguard the shares of the Tripoli and Fezan regions. With this exchange of ultimatums, the oil crisis is growing more intractable. Authorities in Tripoli — both the government and the GNC — refuse to speak directly with the Political Bureau of Cyrenaica. Libyan public opinion is divided over the federal option, especially in eastern Libya where one camp supports the Cyrenaica federalist drive, another has reservations and a third is opposed. Some experts in constitutional law believe that it will be impossible to resolve these complicated issues before a new constitution is drafted. Elections for the Constituent Committee that will be charged with this task are scheduled for the end of December.
