Archive for June 2014
LIBYA – ELECTIONS IN A HEAT WAVE – IS DEMOCRACY COOKED?
Yesterday, so it is reported, 630,000 Libyans went to the polling booths, despite a fierce heat wave, in an election which many hope will bring a strong House of Representatives into being. Voting was slow according to Reuters and there are still enough obstacles in the way of free and fair elections to worry Libya’s friends. Given the circumstances this was a courageous effort but it may well be the last chance for Libyans to establish a democracy.
The new House of Representatives is to replace the old and now largely discredited General National Congress which was brought into being in July 2012 by means of the first democratic election in Libya for over 40 years. Like the GNC, the House of Representatives will have 200 seats of which only 17 are reserved for women. It seems that something of the order of 1,600 candidates stood for election but no political parties were allowed, openly at least, to endorse candidates.
The serious security breakdown in the country hampered the voter registration process and only around 1.5 million were on the electoral rolls as compared to 2.8 million who were eligible to vote for the old GNC in July 2012.This means that there was a 45% turnout in this crucial election.
The High National Elections Commission has reserved 15 seats until elections can be held in Derna, Kufra, Murzuk and al-Jamial where security breakdowns stopped the democratic process.
Sources are reporting that voting in Kufra, the southern oasis city, has been held up because of a protest by the majority Sway tribesmen who are attempting to ensure that their favoured candidate wins the poll. The Tebu minority however turned out in force in their neighbourhoods. This means that 10 out of the 15 polling stations in the city did not open on the 25th June.
In Sebha, the old capital of the Fezzan, all of the polling booths except two were open and functioned effectively. The two exceptions were in the neighbourhoods were tension was high because the Gaddadfa and the Awlad Sulieman tribes had clashed recently.
Benghazi is in the throes of a major battle between the forces of Major General Khalifa Hafter and the Islamist Jihadist Ansar Sharia and its allies. The terrible news of the brutal killing of women’s rights activist and lawyer Salwa Bughagis just as she had returned from the polling booth has shaken Benghazi. Khalifa Hafter declared a cease fire to allow people to vote. The process must have been fraught with danger. Even so it seems that all the polling stations but one operated successfully.
In the eastern city of Derna which Ansar Sharia and its allies have established an Islamic Caliphate, voting has been declared impossible and the outcome there remains uncertain.
The High National Elections Commission has stated that the Libyan House of Representativ election results may be announced on 27th or 28th June.
John Oakes
26th June 2014
This infographic gives you all the information on the Libyan election. It is essential reading.
More thoughts on Libya’s House of Representatives elections can be found here.
http://www.aawsat.net/2014/06/article55333637
or
http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/06/what-you-need-to-know-about-libyas-elections/373387/
LIBYA – SOME NOTES ON ISLAMIC KALASHNITOCRACIES – THE LITTLE CHALIPHATE OF DERNA AND THE BIGGER CHALIPHATE OF DAASH
Ansar Sharia has established a Salafist Caliphate in the eastern Libyan city of Derna and is at war in neighbouring Benghazi with the forces of retired Libyan Major General Khalifa Hafter.
Ansar Sharia is an armed Salafist Jihadists group which refuses to become involved in elections because it perceives politics to be anti Islamic. In their view the will of god supersedes the will of the people. In practice this faction would impose its interpretation of Sharia law at the point of a gun. For them, to borrow a phrase, the AK47 rifle outranks the ballot box. They state that “The goal of Ansar al-Sharia brigade is to implement the laws of Allah on the land, and reject the human implemented laws and earthly made constitutions. There will be nothing ruling in this country other than the laws of Allah.” They propose the establishment of a theocratic government in Libya and the ‘restoration’ of a global Islamic Caliphate. Perhaps, in view of their habit of imposing their rule with the aid of that ubiquitous persuader the Kalashnikov automatic rifle, it might be suggested they are attempting to establish of an Islamic Kalashnitocracy.
The sometime Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, has been pontificating on the emergence of the Caliphate of Daash, better known to the west as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. He has been asserting that the toppling of Saddam Hussein by the US and UK at the behest of himself and G.W. Bush was not the cause of the recent brutal and comprehensive seizure of Iraq’s northern cities by Sunni Jihadist. He argues that sectarian policies of the al-Maliki government and the West’s failure to intervene in Syria are to blame. He also argues that ““The extremists are small in number, but their narrative – which sees Islam as the victim of a scornful West externally, and an insufficiently religious leadership internally – has a far bigger hold.”In this he may be right.
What is most disturbing is the general ignorance of Islam in the west. That ignorance may extend to influential legislators in both the US and the UK and certainly infects the public perception of Muslims in the UK. It must be time surely for Islamic leaders to have the courage to explain that Salafist Jihadists, such as Ansar Sharia, are a minority, albeit lethal. They might profitably explain that there are differing interpretations of Jihad and it is likely that Salafist Jihadists have a narrow view of its meaning which is not held by the majority of Muslims.
This week in Parliament the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, asserted that the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant’ poses a real and present danger to the UK. At the same time Prime Minister Cameron hinted at a rapprochement with the Shia state of Iran and the possibility of cooperating with it to restore the ‘status quo anti-bellum with caveats’ in Iraq. He and his advisers must surely be wary of precipitating a wider sectarian war. For Cameron, the near total reliance of Britain on Qatari natural gas must be a serious factor in the wider debate and he will note that the Gulf States have not been bosom friends of Iran. The Saudis have already warned against western intervention.
Whilst much of the world’s media focuses on the Iraq crisis I would point out that the Islamic Kalashnitocrats have a wider agenda as witness the devastating attacks by Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Cameroon and the lethal attacks by Al Shaabab in Kenya. The Senegalese President Macky Sall has warned that Africa is facing a mounting terrorism crisis, particularly, the threat of the militant group Boko Haram, and that the continent is in the “heart of the storm.”
The future of Libya, placed as it is at the historic nexus of the trans-Saharan Islamic missionary routes, is of some considerable importance to Sub Saharan Africa.
John Oakes
21st June 2014
For books by John Oakes see… (USA): http://www.amazon.com/John-Oakes/e/B001K86D3O/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1 ….. (UK): http://www.amazon.co.uk/John-Oakes/e/B001K86D3O/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1
Berenice Stories 