Libya: Presidential Council launches initiative to resolve the political crisis

The Libyan Presidential Council launched, yesterday, an initiative to solve the crisis in the country through a consultative meeting among the three Councils (the Presidential Council, the House of Representatives and the High Council of State) in coordination with the UN Special Envoy to Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily.

The Presidential Council’s media office confirmed in a statement that the initiative “prepares for a constitutional dialogue as a priority to end the transitional stages. This dialogue is supposed to include all initiatives, ideas and visions proposed by the national parties and forces to the Presidential Council.”

The media office said the initiative “came in line with the provisions of the road map issued by the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum which is governing the current stage, and based on the moral responsibility of the Presidential Council.”

It added that the initiative comes due to the “keenness to achieve consensus between the House of Representatives and the High Council of State to issue a constitutional base that establishes for presidential and parliamentary elections.”

READ: UN envoy to Libya warns against delaying elections further

The initiative came a day after the President of the High Council of State, Khalid Al-Mishri, suspended communication with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aguila Saleh, along with the works of the joint committees between them, until the abolishing of the law of establishing a constitutional court in the city of Benghazi (east), instead of the constitutional circuit in the Libyan Supreme Court in the Libyan capital, Tripoli (west).

The holding of the elections scheduled for 24 December, 2021, had stalled due to disagreements between state institutions over the two laws of the presidential and parliamentary elections.

After the failure to hold elections last December, the Libyan parties entered into a new conflict after the House of Representatives assigned a new government headed by Fathi Bashagha, which started a new dispute with the internationally recognised Government of National Unity, headed by Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, who refuses to hand over power except to a government that comes through a newly elected parliament.