Libya’s Presidential Council Takes Action To End The Political Turmoil

In collaboration with the UN Special Envoy to Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, the Libyan Presidential Council launched an initiative yesterday to resolve the nation’s crisis through a consultative meeting of the three Councils (the Presidential Council, the House of Representatives, and the High Council of State).

The initiative’s existence was acknowledged in a statement by the Presidential Council’s media office “as a top priority, gets ready for a constitutional discussion to put an end to the transitional phases. All initiatives, concepts, and plans put forth to the Presidential Council by national parties and forces are to be discussed in this dialogue.”

According to the media office, the effort was “based on the moral obligation of the Presidential Council” and “came in line with the terms of the road plan provided by the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum which is ruling the current stage.”

The desire to reach an agreement between the House of Representatives and the High Council of State to issue a constitutional framework that establishes for presidential and parliamentary elections, it was noted, is what spurred the proposal.

The initiative was taken a day after Khalid Al-Mishri, President of the High Council of State, suspended communication and joint committee work with Aguila Saleh, Speaker of the House of Representatives, until the law establishing a constitutional court in Benghazi (east) rather than the constitutional circuit in the Libyan Supreme Court in Tripoli was repealed (west).

Elections that were supposed to take place on December 24, 2021, were postponed because of conflicts between state entities regarding the regulations governing the presidential and parliamentary elections.

The House of Representatives appointed a new government led by Fathi Bashagha, which sparked a new conflict with the internationally recognized Government of National Unity, led by Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, who refuses to cede power except to a government that comes through a newly elected parliament, after elections were unable to be held in December of last year. This new conflict pitted the Libyan parties against each other.