The dominance of independents over the GNC, huge divisions inside major coalitions, and the narrow regional considerations, are all obstacles that may thwart the government of newly elected Prime Minister Ali Zeidan.
The dominance of independents over the GNC, huge divisions inside major coalitions, and the narrow regional considerations, are all obstacles that may thwart the government of newly elected Prime Minister Ali Zeidan.
Mustafa Abushagur, the interim Deputy Prime Minister, won the GNC confidence and defeated Mahmoud Jebril, the candidate of the National Force Alliance (NFA), the biggest political coalition inside the GNC, but he didn’t win the GNC’s confidence in both of the formations he proposed. That led to a new a race to elect a new prime minister where Ali Zeidan, a GNC former member, won 93 votes on October 14, 2012, against 85 for his rival Mohamed Hrari, District Administration Minister.
However, Zeidan’s victory doesn’t mean that things will be easy for him. According to politicians and observers, he still has to convince the GNC of the new government formation, which it is hardly an easy task.
Zeidan’s challenges
Salaheddin Abdulhamid, a founding member of the Islamic-oriented Justice and Construction Party (JCP), expects that the GNC would not succumb to public pressure and agree on any government formed by Zeidan after Abushagur failed to form a strong government. “The GNC should properly assess Zeidan’s government politically and factually and in terms of its capabilities,” he added.
Abdulhamid believes that the crisis of forming a government started with the elections system that produced a “disconnected” Constituent Assembly dominated by independents with 120 seats against 80 for political parties. According to Abdulhamid, the dominance of independents over the parliament has enhanced the “intellectual, regional and psychological divisions among the GNC members” and given them an opportunity to practice “political blackmailing.”
Zeidan’s narrow victory hasn’t been achieved because the independents or the major parties have absolutely agreed on him as the next prime minister, but because Zeidan is “a GNC former member and in daily touch with its members, and also because of the absence of some members to do pilgrimage and the mistakes committed by some political coalitions.”
Abdulhamid noted that “some NFA members voted for Hrari, while some JCP members voted for Zeidan” adding that a coherent government formation “needs a strong parliamentary base the current GNC might not provide.”
Clash of titans
Abdullah Kabir, a journalist from Misrata, ascribes the failure to form a government to the disagreement between the two largest coalitions in the GNC, namely NFA (39 seats) and JCP (17 seats), not to mention the independents affiliated with them.
According to Kabir, this disagreement has already pressured Abushagur. “Every small political coalition and also independents demanded the largest number of ministerial portfolios. That prevented the formation of the government,” he explained.
Other observers agree with Abdulhamid’s view that the elections system has impeded forming a homogeneous Constituent Assembly. Anas Faytori, a political analyst, says that the election system “has made independents major players, which has led to a stagnant political landscape.” According Faytori, that goes against the modern democratic principles, which are “based on preferring the political parties’ visions and programs to the individual ones of the independents.”
Faytori expects the GNC will approve Zeidan’s government not because it is convinced of its political program but due to the current political circumstances. “The GNC will be pressured to approve to avoid popular rage, which might withdraw legitimacy from it,” he explained.
The state dilemma
Muhammad Tumi, a GNC member, denies that there is a severe crisis in forming the government. He expects that Zeidan would learn from Abushagur’s mistakes. “The current difficulties are logical results given that Libya has just got out of a radical revolution that wiped out all the previous standards and there are no experiences or institutions to exploit their previous cognitive and political accumulations,” he added.
Munir Ko’oud, a reporter in Libya Al Hura TV channel, believes that Abushagur failed because the political and legislative parties had used the language of political and regional conflicts in dealing with the issue of forming an interim government.
According to Ko’oud, even though Zeidan has been elected as the prime minister, the political track is still not correctly directed and Libyans have fears of his failure to form a government. “Zeidan’s victory was narrow and some political parties didn’t agree on him as the GNC chairman due to ideological and political reasons,” he explained.
Ko’oud expresses concerns that these political parties would contribute to Zeidan’s failure and obstruct the democratic process, which may lead Libya to the dilemma of building a state.
