http://www.theage.com.au/world/libyan-voters-fear-the-beards-20120708-21pkn.html Libyan voters fear the beards Date July 9, 2012 Ruth Pollard Families in the Libyan city of Sirte refuse to vote in the first free election until the government fixes their damaged homes. a.. Autoplay OnOff b.. Video feedback c.. Video settings THE golden-coloured stallion with the four white socks is everywhere, rearing up onto its hind legs and reaching towards the sky. ‘‘The government that will serve you wherever you are,’’ reads the slogan below.
A symbol of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction Party, the horse has been a dominant image during Libya’s election, stirring long-held feelings of distrust amongst Libyans who have watched the rise of Islamist parties after the Arab revolutions with growing concern. Although a deeply religious counry, Libyans — men and women alike — pride themselves on keeping the ‘‘middle ground’’ when it comes to faith. The symbol of the Muslim Brotherhood's Justice and Construction Party. Photo: Ruth Pollard ‘‘I am a Muslim, I pray five times a day,’’ said one man in his seventies. ‘‘But I am never going to tell you to wear a head scarf.’’ Central to the concerns is the oft-repeated belief that many of the candidates in Saturday’s historic national elections, aware of the suspicion with which the Muslim Brotherhood is viewed, ran as independents and will only later reveal their connections to the decades-old Islamic movement. ‘‘When the international forces pulled out so quickly they created a political vacuum and this only serves one force — the most organised group and that is the Muslim Brotherhood,’’ said Zahra Langhi, an activist with the Libyan Women’s Platform for Peace. ‘‘So we will not see a fair representation from this election, and that is the whole idea of democracy, to have all our voices heard.’’ >From the victory of the moderate Islamist al-Nahda Party in neighbouring >Tunisia to the dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s parliamentary >elections that culminated last month in the election of the Brotherhood’s >candidate, Mohammed Morsi, as the country’s president, the sweep of Islamist >victories is causing ripples of concern. In the conservative eastern city of Benghazi — considered the birthplace of the revolution that ended Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year reign — Islamists won a large cut of the vote in recent council elections. ‘‘I am afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood . . . and the West is also right to be frightened,’’ said Enhemed Baraa, a former Libyan diplomat who served in Kuwait, Switzerland, the Phillippines and Sri Lanka for the Gaddafi regime until he retired in 2006. ‘‘We are Muslims here but 99 per cent of us are not extremists.’’ Gaddafi ruthlessly supressed the Islamists during his time in power, just as former president Hosni Mubarak did in Egypt. ‘‘The one good thing Gaddafi did in 42 years was to keep the beards away,’’ said Mohammed, 38, a civil engineer who drives taxis in Tripoli, referring to the distinctive beards favoured by the Brotherhood. ‘‘There are many candidates who are really with the Muslim Brotherhood but who are running as independents - only after the election will they reveal their true colours,’’ he warned. Yet despite these regularly-repeated fears, the name most mentioned by voters The Age spoke to — from central Tripoli neighbourhoods to the former Gaddafi stronghold of Abu Salim — was Mahmoud Jibril and his National Forces Alliance. Mr Jibril, Libya’s interim prime minister until he resigned last October, is viewed as a talented moderate with solid ideas for a program that will use the country’s vast oil wealth to lift Libya out of its prolonged state of disrepair. As polls closed and celebrations began in earnest — cars filled with people flying Libyan flags, voters cheering loudly and hugging each other on the street, soldiers at checkpoints grinning widely and flashing V for victory — it appeared Libya had passed its first democratic test. But the day was not without its dramas. Armed men attacked polling stations in Benghazi and other eastern cities, burning ballot boxes and shooting at voters, while in other centres around the country, voting papers went missing and some stations just failed to open, observers reported. The spokesman for the High National Electoral Commission, Wesam Alsgaym, could barely contain his relief that voting had gone ahead smoothly in the majority of centres. ‘‘Mostly we were concerned about security because so many people are still armed, but things went well at 93 per cent of polling stations,’’ he told The Age. At polling station after polling station, voters were openly joyful about their newly-acquired right to vote. Women were ululating, men were hugging and proudly displaying their ink-stained fingers. But in the voting centers for the displaced Tawerghans — pilloried as Gaddafi supporters and driven out of their 30,000 strong town near Misrata and forced to live in camps around Libya — the mood was more subdued. There was still big grins from those who had just voted, however the overriding issue was one of loss — of their homes, burnt to the ground by angry Misratans — and their desire to return. ‘‘We are so happy to vote, but mostly we want to go back — we were forced to move after the last Ramadan (late August last year) and we just want to go home,’’ said a 23-year-old woman who did not want to be named. Reconciliation between the Misratans and Tawerghans, or between the militia who had forcibly removed the Mashashia tribespeople from towns near Zintan, remains one of the main challenges for the new General Assembly. Also dominant on the Tripoli skyline were the posters of the Islamist Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who stepped down as head of the Tripoli Military Council earlier this year to join the al-Watan, or Homeland, party. Voters repeatedly noted, often in voices dripping with sarcasm, that the election posters of Mr Belhaj’s party featured women with their faces uncovered. ‘‘It is a trick,’’ one young woman, a university student, said. ‘‘They want us to believe they are not strict Muslims, but we know differently.’’ Wafa Alnass, a candidate for the moderate Islamist Party for Homeland Development and Welfare, was quick to distance herself from Belhaj and the Muslim Brotherhood. ‘‘We believe there should be no extremism, no fighting, just a normal Islamic country,’’ she said. Quick to express her concerns about independent candidates actually representing an organised Islamist movement, she says candidates for her party were screened with extra caution to weed out the pretenders. A daugher of one of Libya’s best-known sheikhs, Attayb Alnass, she says her whole family threw themselves behind the revolution. Her son fought with the rebels and she works on national reconciliation programs that aim to calm fractured relations between regions with decades-old rivalries. Alnass is scathing of the West’s and Libya’s failure to engage women in the political process, saying women are the core of the family who have been shunned for too long. ‘‘Hundreds of charities formed during the revolution, mostly run by women,’’ she said. ‘‘They would get in their cars and drive food and medication to the rebels on the front line and nobody would ever stop and search their vehicles because Gaddafi thought women were stupid and could not do anything.’’ Primary poll results are expected to be released by Thursday, then parties and candidates can challenge the count, with the final count due to be revealed on July 21. 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