Leader urges election boycott in eastern Libya

Barqa is the Arabic name for Cyrenaica, or northeastern Libya

Πηγή: Daily Bulletin
By RAMI AL-SHAHEIBI (AP)
May 4 2012

TRIPOLI, Libya—The head of eastern Libya's self-declared semiautonomous region on Friday called for a boycott of next month's national vote for an assembly that would form a government and prepare for the country's new constitution.

Ahmed al-Zubair claimed that the elections are just another tool to "marginalize" the east.

His call is a sign of the tribal and political factionalism that plagues Libya after the fall of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi last year.

The uprising against Gadhafi began in Benghazi, eastern Libya's main city, where people have long complained that Gadhafi's regime in the western part of the country discriminated against them.

Eastern leaders say nothing has changed since the toppling of Gadhafi's rule.

"We don't want to be part of the national congress. It's just another form of marginalization by the West," al-Zubair said.

It is not clear to what extend his call for a boycott of the June vote would resonate among the easterners, who like Libyans elsewhere are eager to move forward with a new government and constitution.

Top tribal leaders and commanders of militia groups in eastern Libya in March set up a semi-independent region named Barqa, leading to fears that Libya could fragment into several states.

Barqa would cover nearly half the country, from the center to the Egyptian border in the east and south to the borders with Chad and Sudan.

The state would have its own parliament, police force, courts and capital in Benghazi, the country's second largest city after Tripoli.

The move was seen as an expression of frustration with decades of neglect by Gadhafi and the inability of the new government, the National Transitional Council, to improve the situation.

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the leader of the NTC who is originally from eastern Libya, criticized Barqa leaders and accused them of serving foreign interests that aim to tear the country apart.

The NTC has promised to speed up decentralization to give local councils more authority, but Barqa leaders have rejected that.

"Any new government can come and change the whole thing again," said tribal sheik Tayyeb al-Obeidi from one of the biggest tribes in the country.

Al-Obeidi spoke during a meeting Thursday of top tribal leaders in the east who discussed forming local councils within two weeks that would report to the Barqa's main administrative council.

However, al-Obeidi said this move would not go against the national unity of Libyans or cancel the government in Tripoli.

Eastern Libya Demands a Measure of Autonomy in a Loose National Federation

Πηγή: New York Times
By SULIMAN ALI ALZWAY and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

March 7 2012

BENGHAZI, Libya — In a symbolic gesture of defiance, militia and tribal chiefs from eastern Libya gathered here on Tuesday to demand a return to the loose federation that prevailed before Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi took power four decades ago.

Challenging the country’s transitional leaders in the nation’s capital, Tripoli, the 3,000 people assembled in an old soap factory near the regional capital, Benghazi, also announced unilateral plans to begin establishing their own autonomous government.

The eastern region is crucial to Libya’s future because it contains much of the country’s oil, and the demands cast new doubts on the feasibility and credibility of the transitional leaders’ plans for elections in June to choose a national constituent assembly that would form a new government and draft a constitution.

Participants in the conference said their eastern state, known as Barqa, would have its own legislature, budget, police and courts, with Benghazi as its capital. But they said the federal government would continue to control foreign policy, the national army and the oil.

“We sent our sons and weapons to liberate the entire western area, so where is the division?” asked Dr. Ezza el-Hwaity, a speaker at the conference, alluding to the east’s place at the forefront of the uprising. “Are our demands too high compared to the sacrifices we made?”

A regional contest for power erupted immediately after the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi six months ago. Militias organized in several cities during the war have yet to turn over their weapons or submit to a central authority, and the transitional government has struggled to devise a formula that could reconcile competing demands for representation in the planned constituent assembly.

The so-called Transitional National Council, which came together without elections early in the uprising, recently announced plans that called for 111 members of the assembly to come from the populous western region around Tripoli and about 60 seats from the east of the country — a formula that helped provoke the eastern region’s declaration of autonomy on Tuesday.

Last month, a group of militias from western Libya formed their own alliance, ostensibly to stabilize their region but also to exert influence nationally.

The specter of partition has hung over the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi from the start, in part because of the country’s long history of division and its relatively short history of national unity in the area now known as Libya. Governed as three colonies by the Ottomon Empire, Libya was first constituted as a single unit after the conquest by Italy, in 1934, and the three provinces remained strong and largely independent even under the federal monarchy formed by the United Nations in 1951.

After his 1969 coup d’état, Colonel Qaddafi imposed a highly centralized police state on the provinces, and he moved the capital from the east to Tripoli in the west. Many in the east felt he starved their region of resources, and that region was the first to rise up against his rule.

In anticipation of fears that a challenge to Colonel Qaddafi could lead to a new partition of the country, demonstrators chanted for east-west unity from the beginning of the protests in Tripoli. The self-appointed leaders of the revolt quickly pledged to keep the capital in Tripoli, to help dispel the impression that the uprising was a battle of east against west.

As the transitional leaders have increasingly acquiesced to the autonomy of the freewheeling regional militias, questions of federalism and decentralization have dominated Libyan public debate across the country. Trying to forestall Tuesday’s declaration of self-government in the east, the transitional leaders recently stepped up talk of a decentralization that would allow citizens more of a voice in local affairs without dismembering the national government.

But on Monday, the acting prime minister, Abdel Rahim el-Keeb, appeared on state television to urge Libyans to reject the calls for “federalism.”

“We do not need federalism because we are heading toward decentralization, and we don’t want to go back 50 years,” he said, adding, “It is up to the silent majority to protect the institutions of the state, to fight the chaos.”