Libya’s landmark election

Libya’s first nationwide parlia­men­tary election in 50 years was indeed historic. The election went off re­latively peacefully, the ‘liberal’ ‘pro-business’ bloc beat the Isla­mist parties, voter turnout was a very respectable 62 per cent and international observers say the election was on the whole free and fair.

Libyans have every reason to be proud of their first free election after the overthrow of Gaddafi- Anthony Manduca

Significantly, sectors of the electorate thought to be hostile to the post-revolutionary scenario did not boycott the poll. The turnout in Sirte, Muammar Gaddafi’s home town, was as high as 65 per cent, while the turnout in another Gaddafi stronghold, the north-eastern Tripoli district of Abu Salim, was also high. This is indeed encouraging and augurs well for the future of democracy in Libya.

Libya’s election is, in fact, nothing short of remarkable. The country has absolutely no history of free elections or democracy, and under the 42-year Gaddafi dictatorship the country made no progress whatsoever on the political front.

The country had no civil society, no political parties, no trade unions, no rule of law, no respect for human rights and not even a truly professional army. Libya has had to start from scratch in building a functioning democracy and last week’s election was certainly a step in the right direction.

The bloc of political parties led by former interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, the National Forces Alliance, won a majority of the 80 seats reserved for political parties. However, the make-up of the new Libyan government is still unknown as the rest of the 120 seats are set aside for independent candi­­dates, whose political allegiances are not yet fully established.

It is believed that a large percentage of these independent MPs harbour Islamist sympathies, prompting Mohammed Sawan, the head of the Justice and Construction Party, the political wing of Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood, to say: “With our own numbers we are almost certain that we have the majority of the independent seats”.

So we will have to wait and see what political alliances these independent MPs enter into, and we can expect a lot of horse-trading bet­ween them and the political parties.

Jibril has made it clear, however, that he favours an all-inclusive broad-based coalition government rep­resenting all Libyans, so his chances of striking a deal with these independents appear promising.

Soon after it became clear that the National Forces Alliance would win the election Jibril reached out to the newly-elected MPs and said: “Some media channels started referring to the National Forces Alliance as liberals – that’s not true. The party is composed of different political formations.”

In a country where Islam plays an important role in everyday life, Jibril wanted to show that this will continue in the new Libya, yet it is clear that Jibril’s brand of Islam will be a moderate one.

Libya lacks the secular religious divide evident in many Arab countries; it is a deeply pious country but there seems to be no great enthusiasm for Islamic rule.

Jibril’s victory appears to have bucked the regional trend in favour of Islamist parties (such as in Egypt and Tunisia) and could encourage moderates, liberals and secularists in the Arab world to believe that there indeed is a third way between secular authoritarianism and the Islamists.

In fact, this is the second time that a non-Islamic bloc in an Arab country has won a general election.

In Algeria’s parliamentary elections held last May the governing secular party, the National Liberation Front, together with its partner, the National Democratic Rally, also a secular party, achieved a majority of seats. Although there have been questions raised about the fairness of the Algerian election, as well as the low popular turnout (officially it was 42 per cent but some critics insist it could have been as low as 25 per cent) there was no popular endorsement of the Islamist parties, probably because of their perceived link to the violence and civil unrest in the 1990s, which killed 150,000 people.

There are also particular reasons why the Islamists fared badly in Libya. Under Gaddafi’s rule the Muslim Brotherhood was completely banned and therefore had no foothold in Libyan society. Its leaders were not well known figures, unlike Jibril who played a prominent role in the revolution and was one of the few moderate members of previous regime.

Under the Mubarak regime in Egypt, in contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood, although banned, was semi-tolerated and allowed to operate in the social sphere. Muslim Brotherhood candidates in Egypt were also allowed to take part in elections (which were always rigged) as long as they ran on a non-party ticket.

In Tunisia, the Islamist Ennahda party (affiliated to the global Muslim Brotherhood movement) was totally banned, but at least there was a visible leader in exile in London, Rachid Ghannouchi, who mobilised popular support when he returned home after the collapse of the Ben Ali regime.

It also seems that Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood took victory for gran­ted and simply expected the Isla­mist trend to continue after the Tunisian and Egyptian elections. However, Jibril offered Libyans a concrete detailed plan of economic and political reforms and did not resort to scaremongering about the Islamists.

Furthermore, the fact that the non-Islamist bloc was united under one banner, unlike in Egypt, definitely helped Jibril’s National Forces Alliance.

The new government, when it is formed, will face many challenges. Its priorities include drafting a new constitution, establishing security and the rule of law, negotiating with various militias to have them integrated into the country’s army, rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, attracting foreign direct in­vest­ment, managing renewed claims for autonomy in the country’s eastern province as well as in the south, and crucially, improving the everyday lives of ordinary Libyans through economic growth and a fair distribution of the country’s wealth.

Whatever the challenges ahead, Libyans have every reason to be proud of their first free election after the overthrow of Gaddafi. Although this is just the first step in the process of building a new democratic Libya this election is without doubt a milestone in the history of the country.