Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood and Obstruction of Elections… Attempts to Avoid the ”End”

Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood maintains its presence on the political scene and is fighting to obstruct the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for December, because it knows very well that they will be the end of the Brotherhood project in the country.

The group, which according to the Libyan parliament is classified as a terrorist organization, has been suffering from internal crises that began with the success of the UN-sponsored political process.

Many members of the Justice and Construction Party (JCP, the old name of the group) submitted their resignations in protest at what they considered a lack of implementation of the agreed revisions, before which the group was completely dissolved in the city of Misrata last October.

Last chance

Observers and analysts believe that “obstructing the elections” is the last chance to ensure the Brotherhood’s survival in the political scene, especially after the fall of Ennahdha Party in Tunisia and before it the resounding downfall of the international organization in Egypt years ago, in addition to the organization’s loss of popular support in Libya.

Libyan political analyst Mohamed El-Sallak said that the Brotherhood “is well aware that the issue of its political extinction is around the corner, and that it would suffer a big loss if the elections were held, because it has no popular base, which explains their many attempts to abort the political process, and with a quick look at all the constitutional elections that have been held since 2012, it will realize this fact.”

Mahmoud Khalaf, a professor of political science at the Libyan University, said the Brotherhood “never stopped working in preparation for the elections despite all the statements and positions that reflected their rejection of them”. He said the “infiltration” of youth is one of their tools during this period.

In order to achieve its goal of attracting youth, ISIL is resorting to several steps, Khalaf said. First, it is launching “appeals” to form youth movements, notifying them of the “injustice and exclusion” they have been subjected to over the past decade, and then “indoctrinating” them to attack a national movement and sow hatred against it.

Chaos group

Libyan political analyst Kilani Al-Maghribi said that the Brotherhood is “an outlawed obscurantist group, active only in conditions of chaos that provide it with protection for its criminal acts, and therefore it is trying by all means not to complete the road map. So what it sees today is a fierce war for Libya’s dinosaurs to survive before writing the last lines of its extinction story.”

Libyan political analyst Redwan al-Fitouri agrees with al-Maghribi that this group “does not recognize the law and does not have any popular support in the country, so their end will be, not to mention that they do not believe in the state in the first place but in the so-called caliphate, which is based on terrorism and is run globally.”

Infiltrate State Institutions 

El-Sallak said the Brotherhood seeks to “infiltrate state institutions to control all aspects of government, as a safe alternative if the elections are held on time, especially in sovereign positions”, adding that the Brotherhood seeks to reconstitute the High National Elections Commission.

Turkish agents

In a statement, Al-Maghribi clarified that the attempts of the Brotherhood, to delay the constitutional deadline to prevent the election of a new president and parliament, to prevent the establishment of a state with institutions without wars, are mainly aimed at “weakening the Libyan army, which they call the “military”, which is an Ottoman Turkish term because the Brotherhood are proxies for the Turkish occupation, the armed forces are the ones that stand against them.”

El-Sallak warned against the success of the Brotherhood’s plan to disrupt the elections, because it will lead to a political stalemate and all options will be available, calling on the various Libyan political parties and the international community to support the completion of the road map.