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By Umar Khan.
Tripoli, 7 December:
Elections for Tripoli local council . . .[restrict](TLC) scheduled for 23 December have been delayed until the local administration law comes into effect. New elections will be held in all towns and cities for the local district and area councils, based on the local administration law passed by the National Transitional Council (NTC) earlier this year. Experts suggest that it will take at least four months to implement the law. However, as yet, no exact time frame is given by the government.
Fawzia Masri, spokesperson of the independent election commission that was organizing the TLC elections told the Libya Herald that it wanted to go ahead with the planned voting on 23 December but does not have the resources.
“The TLC refused to cooperate with us at all and we lack the resources to hold elections on our own. We keep hearing about the decision from the General National Congress (GNC) but we have not received it to-date. Without any of this help, voting on 23 December is not possible.”
Earlier this week the deputy chairman of TLC, Hisham Krekshi told the Libya Herald that there will be no elections before the new law is implemented.
“There will be local elections once the local administration law is implemented. There is no point going to elections twice in few months. The election committee is aware of the details but is still trying to complicate the situation. We will send them a formal letter informing them of the GNC decision and to stop their activities.”
Krekshi also said that there had been no contact between the TLC and the election commission over the past two weeks.
Krekshi continued: “There is absolute no truth to the fact that we didn’t cooperate with the commission. We helped as much as we were bound to do, and they didn’t not contact us in the past two weeks after the GNC decision was made and the initial voting day postponed.”
According to a source in the ministry of local governance, no local elections will take place until after the implementation of local administration law.
“Whatever these independent electoral committees say, they will have to abide by the decision of the GNC. The new minister has started working and needs some time to settle down. The first meeting between the minister and the committee formed by the GNC, will take place in the coming few days, to put a road map in place.” The source continued, “The experts are working to finish the final set of bylaws so that as soon as the committee sees fit, the process of implementation can be started, without wasting any more time.”
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