Current Libyan Prime Minister Abdel Hamid Dbeibah has expressed his intention to hold parliamentary elections next summer and warned of the risk of war in the event of the formation of a parallel government.
Abdelhamid Dbeibah has taken the initiative to hold parliamentary elections by next summer, postponing the presidential elections to a later period. This decision was announced as the parliament prepares to induct his successor Fathi Bachagha next week.
Since Muammar Gaddafi died on October 20, 2011, the country has been bedeviled by divisions between competing institutions in the east and west. Libya has even found itself with two rival Prime Ministers in Tripoli since February 10, after the Tobruk parliament in the east appointed Fathi Bachagha as the new Prime Minister.
The parliamentary chamber considers that “Dbeibah’s mandate has expired’ since the postponement of the presidential and parliamentary elections on December 24, 2021. In this struggle for legality, Fathi Bachagha can count on the support of Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the strongman of the oil-rich east of the country and supported by Russia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
But Dbeibah, the outgoing Prime Minister, still recognized by the United Nations and backed by Turkey, said he “will not accept any new transitional phase or parallel authority.” He added that “his government will remain in office until elections are held and that it will only hand over to an elected government.” With both sides holding to their positions, Libya may find itself in the next few days with two parallel governments, as it was between 2014 and 2020, a new political crisis that increases the risk of a new civil war in the country.
Appointed in February 2021 to head a new transitional government of national unity under a United Nations-backed peace plan, Dbeibah reaffirmed on Monday that he would continue to pursue his roadmap of unifying the institutions and leading the country to presidential and parliamentary elections. He concluded in a belligerent speech that “the appointment of a new transitional government could lead to war” in Libya.
CD/fss/abj/APA