Libya’s municipal elections expose the hypocrisy of the rotten political elite

16 November marked an important day in Libya as it managed to, successfully, organise elections in 58 municipalities across the huge country despite all difficulties facing such a big operation. From Al-Burdy on the Egyptian borders to Al-Kufra near the Sudanese borders, all the way to Ubrai near the borders with Algeria and up north-west to Zultin, close to the Tunisian borders and in hundreds of polling stations, the High National Election Commission (HNEC) proved that it can succeed in carrying out its mandate if given the right support and left alone away from political meddling.

The Commission plans to run the second phase of the local elections in January 2025.

The United Nations Mission in Libya, in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, commended the “successful conduct of polling” and congratulated the Libyan people “for their impressive 74 per cent voter turnout.”

Voting in numbers 

According to HENC numbers, 186,055 Libyans registered  to vote and 74 per cent of them did cast their ballots in 777 polling stations under 352 local election centres. 2,331 individuals were registered to contest the election. They were divided into two categories: individuals and lists as stipulated by Law No. 59 of 2012 on Local governments and no political parties are allowed to run for elections. The Commission’s breakdown of both categories showed that there were 195 lists with 1,786 contestants while the number of individuals was 545. Women made up 3 per cent of the individual contestants, or just 17 women, while the figure for the lists category was 30 per cent or some nearly 56 women were included in the different lists.

OPINION: The unjustifiable war in Gaza

There were some 4,877 representatives of candidates watching the process and about 1,300 local independent observers, helped by 64 foreign observers.

By Tuesday, 19 November, HNEC’s data centre confirmed that it had not yet published any official results, warning contestants not to take for facts different unofficial numbers being circulated on social media. However, the Commission confirmed that, up until last Tuesday, it had finished 78 per cent of individual ballots which had already been fed into its date centre and all voting boxes from all elections centres, which means it is now working on tallying the final results— impressive work in divided Libya.

Lessons learned

The first and foremost lesson is the simple fact that HNEC can run successful elections, despite all the difficulties it faces, including lack of funds and the huge logistics involved in the vast country. This raises the question: why not go for both national legislative and presidential vote since there are no major hurdles that hamper the Commission’s work? The simple answer is politically manufactured hurdles keep denying Libyans the right to vote in national elections. This is a huge embarrassment for the political elite entrenched in the power. It also means, in practice, there are no big problems in organising the national vote. It also means that the shelving of 2021 legislative and presidential vote were mere political manoeuvres by those in power, who do not want elections because it threatens their power, privileges and status.

Despite lacking any legitimacy, the current Parliament, the Higher Council of State, the government in Tripoli and the parallel administration in Benghazi keep creating problems in endless political wrangling to prevent Libyans form choosing their own representatives and president. Libyan women also remain disadvantaged in the male-dominated and traditional society. Figures show that only 17 women from 545 people ran as independent, while 56 were included in the lists category. This is not promising and does not satisfy the elections law, which dictates that 30 per cent of local councils must be women. It is not yet clear if the final tally of votes will produce a different outcome, in which women representation is higher or close to the required quota of 30 per cent.

The third lesson could be that the country has the capacity, both technical and personnel, to organise successful voting. In many ways, the local elections are much harder, given the country’s tribal and regional divisions, than the national polls and HENC has demonstrated that it is up to the task, literally, depriving the political elite of any justification to continue to delay the national vote.

OPINION: Smotrich has confirmed that the quest for ‘Greater Israel’ is real

Notably, also, the political division prevailing in Libya now has not been much trouble and represented no big issue. Eastern and southern Libya are under the parallel Benghazi-based government, while the western region is under the UN recognised government, yet there were no security challenges and absolutely zero violence on polling day; all voting stations were safe, all election boxes safely delivered to the HNEC HQ in Tripoli and the counting process is going on in a very routine fashion without a hitch.

Voter turnout is also a notable number in this phase of voting for local government. While the election Commission gave the figure of 74 per cent, it did not give a breakdown for each municipality. This might reflect people are disinterested in elections or that they do not believe that their elected officials will be able to change much in terms of local services.

However, on the other hand, 74 per cent is quite a high figure when taken against the troubled background the country is going through now. It also means people at the local level do support accountability of elected officials, strengthening of local governments and, above all, they want better services delivered to their villages and neighbourhoods.

Will the rotten political elite take note of this outcome and allow the country to vote for its national parliament and president? It remains to be seen what step will be taken in this regard. Most politicians welcomed the success of this round of partial local elections but nothing is happening on actually agreeing to a national vote to take place yet.

A final note to mention here is the fact that foreign meddlers did play a negative role in aborting the national elections three years ago and they are likely to do the same again, should they feel their interests are threatened, just like the domestic politicians.

OPINION: Palestinians displaced from northern Gaza fear this new Nakba

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.