Fathi Bashagha, Retired pilot heads Government of Libya

The Libyan House of Representatives voted unanimously to select Fathi Bashagha as the new prime minister to succeed Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh.

This is the second time Bashagha has run for authority. As the coalition of Parliament Speaker Aguila Saleh and former national unity government interior minister Fathi Bashagha both lost the chairmanship of the presidential council and the interim government of national unity during the last round of elections for the UN-led Libyan Dialog Forum in Geneva to the Mohamed al-Menfi coalition and Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh in February last year.

From Misrata, Bashagha emerged as a military activist against the regime of the late President Muammar Gaddafi during the events of February 2011, before announcing his candidacy in the 2014 parliamentary elections as one of the city’s deputies.

In December 2015, Bashagha was one of the signatories to the Skhirat Agreement in Morocco and had the opportunity to chair the National Security Council at that time, but he apologized years later, specifically in October 2018, when the Interior Ministry took over from the Presidential Council, replacing Abdul Salam Ashour, but his efforts clashed with armed militias in Tripoli as leaders in Misrata sought to take over and exclude the capital.

Bashagha began to clash with political and security issues in his country, running for the executive branch in February 2021, which he had hoped to win, until he announced his candidacy for the presidency in the presidential elections that could not be held on time.

Bashagha’s confidence in the Libyan parliament to head a new government is likely to exacerbate political differences in the country, as Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh insists on remaining in power amid Libya’s deteriorating services and infrastructure and diminishing job opportunities.