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By Ahmed Elumami.
Tripoli, 28 March 2014:
There will be no list system for political parties the elections for the new . . .[restrict]House of Representatives which, under the February Committee’s proposals, is to replace Congress as the country’s interim legislature.
Participation in elections will be based on “the individual system” not “the list system”, a member of the Committee that devised the plans for a new interim legislature has told the Libya Herald.
Otherwise, the only real difference between the present Congress and the House of Representatives that is to replace it, is the name and its location, Benghazi Congressman and Committee member Ahmed Langhi said.
The House of Representatives, which will meet in his home city, will be fundamentally the same as Congress “with its all advantages and disadvantages” and with the same 200 seats representing the same constituencies, he claimed
However, it appears that there will be nothing to prevent individual candidates being members of a political party – which in reality was the case in the Congressional elections in July 2012. Political parties will thus be present in the new legislature.
Also, to make up for the fact that there few women may be elected on the individual list, there should be a 15-percent quota for women, Langhi said. That would give them a minimum 30 seats in the new legislature.
Under the rules for the 2012 elections, the list of candidates presented by parties had to have men and women alternating. If the first candidate on the list for a particular sub-constituency was a man, the second had to be a woman. Nearly all the 33 currently women in Congress were elected under the system.
At the 25th Arab Summit in Kuwait this week, Congress President Nuri Abu Sahmain declared that the new law authorising elections for the new House would be voted on by the end of this month. In effect that means Sunday. [/restrict]
