http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2012/1108/re11.htm
25 - 31 July 2012
Issue No. 1108
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
Tripoli's testing questions
Is a Libyan coalition of dogma and pragmatism possible? Well, as long as women
are well represented, asserts Gamal Nkrumah
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The Libyan people's road to higher political consciousness began when the NATO
air strikes intensified and the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was forced
out of the capital Tripoli and his stronghold, the Bab Al-Aziziya Barracks. In
this deadly terrain, Libyan democracy was relatively free of maxims and
slogans.
Click to view caption
An eldery woman shows her ink-stained finger after casting her vote
during the National Assembly election in Benghazi. Libyans, some with tears of
joy in their eyes, queued to vote in their first free national election in 60
years
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Of all the Arab upheavals, Libya's has been the most controversial. First and
foremost, the obscene and vulgar intervention by the West, with NATO air cover
and logistical support for the anti-Gaddafi militias, not to speak of the
wanton destruction and barbaric bombardment of non-military targets such as
schools and hospitals, led the country into a state of chaos and lawlessness.
It was an inextricable conjuncture that only a people as resilient as the
desert-dwelling Libyans could possibly contain.
Secondly, Libya turned out to be the only Arab country where the Islamists did
not fare well in parliamentary elections. Only now I find that not thinking
about liberals and secularists in the post-Arab Spring uprisings is far from
being a viable option. The irony is that many pro-Gaddafi activists were not
permitted to vote because around a million and a half registered voters live
mainly as political exiles in neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia.
Thirdly, and most astounding: the only piece of information that has caught my
fancy was the electrifying news that Libyan women garnered more seats in the
elections for the General Congress (GNC) which took place on 7 July than in any
other Arab country, including Egypt and Tunisia.
Electing a constituent assembly in what could be a benchmark for its
neighbours, Libyans elected more women and fewer Islamists than any other Arab
Spring nation.
As such, the most impressive result of the tally was the active participation
of Libyan women in re-shaping the political future of their country. The final
tally gave women 17 per cent representation in the 200-member transitional
legislative authority.
"This is a very good starting point with 32 women elected with the parties and
one independent parliamentarian," Samira Massaud, acting president of Libyan
Women's Union, membership in the thousands.
The GNC was originally designed to appoint a Constituent Assembly to draw up
Libya's new constitution, but the National Transitional Council (NTC) announced
on 5 July that the assembly would instead be directly elected at a later date.
This was the Libyan people's first taste of flexible, non-doctrinaire,
political ideas hitting the hard realities of post-Gaddafi Libya.
The battle to shape the future of the Arab world, it appears, kick-started in
Libya. Tunisia was initially regarded as the trendsetter. Today Libya seems to
have stolen the show.
The future of an Arab world in flux will be fierce. In Egypt and Tunisia, the
polarisation of the political parties and ideologues -- Islamists of all shades
and strands versus a motley bunch of leftists, secularists, and liberals -- are
vying for position in the new post-Arab Spring dispensation.
Mahmoud Jibril, the charismatic leader of the Alliance of National Forces (ANF)
vehemently insisted that he disliked the label "liberal" and "secularist"
because all Libyans are Muslim. Yet it is clear that the Islamists were
sidelined in Libya's 7 July election.
Islamism is one of several spectres that haunt Arab political discourse. In
Libya, the Islamists do not appear to have had the same aura as they did in
Egypt and Tunisia. In the latter two countries, Islamists were more integrally
involved in social networking and in social welfare services. And in
particular, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt had a hand in the conditions that
drove the economic and political elite to engender institutional change based
on the premise that the state no longer wished to provide public utilities,
social welfare services, especially education and health. The religious groups,
including the then-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt emerged as one of the
main providers of sorely needed social services.
Libya, in sharp contrast, suspected the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists
of collaborating with certain elements of the Gaddafi regime. This was
especially so in the case of the more reconciliatory Seif Al-Islam, Gaddafi's
son and heir apparent, who intended to incorporate the Islamists into a new
political dispensation in Libya. Gaddafi himself disapproved and hurled most of
the militant Islamists into his jails.
Moreover, Gaddafi strictly forbade the Islamists from engaging in social
welfare activities. Unlike, in Egypt, where ex-president Hosni Mubarak
permitted the Islamists to freely become involved in charitable work and social
welfare, the Libyan authorities severely restricted the social work of the
Islamists. The public rapport with the Islamists that was most obvious in Egypt
was conspicuously absent in Libya.
This is not meant to be sour grapes. Libyans are understandably elated by the
election results. It would be nothing of the sort. The rot began to set in for
the Islamists.
Moreover, many Libyans, even those with political reservations against
Gaddafi's authoritarian rule, did appreciate his emphasis on social justice and
the provision of social welfare, education and medical care. In 1951, Libya was
the poorest country per capita in the world. By 2011, Libya was the richest
country per capita on the African continent.
A second Arab awakening is in the making. The humbling of the Islamists in
Libya does not necessarily mean that they cannot form coalition governments
with their political rivals.
The dynamics that gave way to the ideological wild goose chase that left the
Islamists trailing behind the liberals and secularists in Libya may have
something to do with the propaganda of the Gaddafi stalwarts, as some Islamists
bitterly remonstrate.
Libya's election set in motion a new political dispensation, freer but also far
more perplexing and complicated than the totalitarianism of Gaddafi's regime.
In Libya, a key element was oil, and it still remains so. The Western nations'
dithering over how to oust Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and the West's lack
of resolve in militarily intervention in Syria contrasts sharply with their
swift intervention in Libya.
Jibril's National Forces Alliance (NFA) gained 39 seats, or 48.9 per cent of
the seats, while the Muslim Brotherhood's Justice and Construction Party
trailed behind with 17 seats, 21.3 per cent. In Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood
has failed to demonstrate that they may metamorphose into Islam's equivalent of
the Christian Democrats in Europe. In short, they have a long way to go.
The Homeland Party, an Islamist coalition headed by Islamic cleric
Ali-Al-Sallabi and Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, a former veteran of the Afghanistan war
against the Soviets and a suspected Al-Qaeda activist, did very poorly. Belhaj
even failed to win a seat in his own constituency in Tripoli.
Belhaj's legitimacy, tainted by the manner in which he lost ground during the
election, now relies even more on whether Jibril and his NFA is able to deliver
political stability and prosperity. But public attitudes cannot change
overnight. Gaddafi insisted that parliamentary democracy was inherently corrupt
and that the Libyan electorate was searching for the least corrupt politicians.
Jibril, apart from being a member of Libya's largest tribal confederation, the
Warfella, is also widely seen as a technocrat.
Gaddafi left Libya debt free and he had grandiose plans to create a single
African currency -- the so-called "African gold dinar".
And, there is a need for caution along both these policy tracks. The Libyans
are rightly sceptical of Islamists, and perhaps that is why there were 634
women candidates participating in the election.
This is one glaring weakness of the Libyan electoral process: only 1.7 million
of 2.8 registered voters participated in the election. The results would
certainly have been radically different had the secret Gaddafi sympathisers,
both at home and abroad, participated in the 7 July poll.
Gaddafi's Libya may have been free of debt, but it threatened to upset the New
Economic World Order by using a gold-based African currency as opposed to the
United States dollar in its transactions. Many Libyans are acutely aware of the
radical policies of Gaddafi.
Libya last held parliamentary elections in 1964 and 1965 during the reign of
the late Libyan monarch King Idriss who was overthrown in a bloodless coup in
1969. In this year's poll, 200 seats were reserved for political parties and
120 seats for individual candidates -- not necessarily independent, but also
affiliated to certain parties.
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of all is that the gains made by the Libyan
people in terms of social welfare would be eroded.
A business oligarchy is not the same as a market economy, and Libya has
neither. And, it appears that the Libyan electorate is conscious of the fact.
Confusing the two different things is lethal for a country's economic and
political prospects.
The global crisis complicated matters further. Libyan voters roundly rejected
Islamism. It is against this backdrop that Jibril or the NTC must take a more
enlightened view of dissent. Should the frustration of Gaddafi loyalists or the
disgruntled Islamists merely explode at a later date, Jibril's authority is
likely to be diminished. Nor should Jibril ignore the regional and
international repercussions of his decisions and actions. Bottling up Islamist
and Gaddafi loyalist indignation does not necessarily mean they will just
disappear in thin air.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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