By Maha Suliman.
Benghazi, 25 November 2014:
A Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) could rule Libya, but only . . .[restrict]as a matter of dire necessity,which had left the House of Representatives and the government unable to carry out their duties.
The commander of the airforce Adam Saqr Geroushi told the Libya Herald “We would create a military council to protect Libya from a political, military and security vacuum as an interim measure to restore order before the election of a president”. He insisted however “there are no plans to create a junta”.
Geroushi said any SCAF would relinquish power immediately after it had fulfilled its role and said it would follow the example of Egypt’s SCAF which led the country from 2011-2012. Egypt’s military council handed over power to Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi.
The airforce head said while the military was reticent to take political power in the country, this did not mean a military council would not be formed to take care of matters concerning the armed forces themselves.
Spokesman for the House of Representatives Faraj Buhashem denied there was any support for a military council in the house. He also said that the armed forces desired power. He said the record needed to be set straight on the issue. “The thing is very far-fetched and it is virtually impossible that it will happen,” he said.
Buhashem said there had been a great deal of media speculation about the prospect of military rule and that this, he was convinced, was being done “to distort the image of Operation Dignity and the Libyan National Army (LNA)”.
“The officers in the Libyan Army are patriotic people and have no ambitions for political power,” he said. “There is no doubt that talk of a coup is untrue and Operation Dignity was not started for any of these reasons,” Buhashem said.
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