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By Callum Paton and Jamal Adel.
Plans announced yesterday by the Higher National Elections Commission (HNEC) to hold a second . . .[restrict]election vote on Wednesday in those places that could not hold the Constitutional Committee elections on Thursday look increasingly shaky with Tebus saying they will continue the boycott and Derna continuing to be plagued by a security vacuum.
He said he would not be involved with a constitution that did not provide guarantees for minority rights. He added that Arab voters should not be allowed to cast their vote for Tebu candidates and vice-versa.
Ali Yaha, a Tebu candidate in Kufra, said he had likewise decided to pull out. He would not recognise those who would not recognise him, he declared.
“National unity is supposed to be founded on national consensus,” he said. “Drafting a constitution without a general consensus can only breed contempt and exclusion,” he added.
In Derna, where coordinated bomb attacks on six polling stations and the murder of a local man who tried to remonstrate with those involved meant voting could not go ahead, a source close to Derna Local Council said fresh polls in the town would be impossible without a considerable security effort on the part of the government. This, he said, was unlikely to materialise.
“They ignored Derna before, during and after the elections, and what happened happened,” he said. “They know the situation in Derna and still did not take action. They don’t care about us.”
The source said the mistakes of Thursday were the sole responsibility of the government, and must not be repeated. He added that Derna Local Council had not been in communication with either the government or HNEC in the aftermath of Thursday’s attacks and that no one from outside Derna had tried to ascertain the security situation on the ground. [/restrict]
