Libyans called upon to participate in constitution referendum before elections

A member of the Board of Trustees of the International Union of Muslim Scholars has called upon the people of Libya to participate in the referendum on a new constitution and work towards reconciliation with each other in order to get through the crisis affecting the country, Quds Press has reported.

“Libya today needs to accelerate the referendum on the constitution drafted by the 60-strong Committee elected by the Libyan people as a matter of urgency,” said writer and researcher Ali Al-Sallabi. “We then need to organise a national peace conference supported by the UN.”

He suggested that the next step after the constitution and the peace conference is to organise presidential and legislative elections. “The current political bodies, whether in Parliament, in the government or in the Presidential Council, do not have the popular or political legitimacy which qualifies them to lead the founding stage of the state institutions,” he explained.

Pointing out that there are no red lines regarding anyone wanting to lead Libya in the next stage, Al-Sallabi said that the Libyan people have the necessary awareness and vigilance to choose the true national leaders and not the fakes that some authoritarian countries are trying to impose on them.

“The will of the people will triumph against the tyrants’ will,” he added confidently. “Those who bet on imposing their positions with iron and fire have no future in Libya or in the region, even though they have raised their voices for some time. That is what history teaches us.”

In July, the Constitution Drafting Assembly voted in favour of the new document, but a number of its members appealed to Al-Bayda Court about the legality of the vote. When the appeal was rejected, a number of public figures from Benghazi filed another appeal in November to the Administrative Court. This court ruled that it does not have jurisdiction over the matter because the members of the assembly are elected directly by the people, and their decisions are outside the jurisdiction of the judiciary.