Saleh, al-Mishri meet in Cairo for Libyan elections
In a fresh bid to reach a consensus on a constitutional rule allowing general elections to go ahead, Libya’s parliamentary speakers Aguila Saleh and Khalid al-Mishri meet in the Egyptian capital on Thursday.
Libyan media reported that the meeting will discuss a number of important issues, foremost among them the “constitutional base”, sovereign positions, and the unification of executive authority, at the invitation of the Egyptian National Committee on the Libyan issue.
The same sources confirmed that the presidents of the Council of Representatives and the Supreme Council of the State arrived in the Egyptian capital on Wednesday and held consultations separately with Egyptian officials in the committee concerned with the file, in preparation for the meetings that will start today in one of the hotels of Greater Cairo, under the auspices of the United Nations mission to Libya. The meeting aims to agree on the constitutional base and the election law, and will discuss the governmental situation.
The Libyan media confirmed that the meetings sponsored by the United Nations Mission in Libya aim to agree on the constitutional base and the electoral law between the two Houses of Representatives and the Supreme Council of the State. It is likely that meetings of the Constitutional Process Commission will resume in the Egyptian capital within days.
The elections file is the most complicated in Libya, and so far there has been no consensus among the political parties because of disagreements over the conditions of running for the presidential race, which was a main reason behind the collapse of the plan of the last elections, which was scheduled for December 2021.
The last meeting between Saleh and al-Mishri took place in Morocco in October of last year, during which they agreed on unifying the executive authority and appointing holders of sovereign positions.
Meanwhile, an international diplomatic push is underway to restore momentum to Libya’s electoral process, led by U.N. envoy Abdoulaye Bathili, who in all meetings with the parties has emphasized “the primacy of the elections in 2023.”
Speaking at the Cabinet meeting on Monday, Prime Minister of National Unity Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh accused Speaker of the House of Representatives Aguila Saleh and President of the Supreme Council of State Khalid al-Mishri of shirking their responsibilities and of depriving 800,000 voters of their electoral right on December 24, 2021, confirming that 2023 will be the year of elections.
