By Taziz Hasairi.
Zuwara, 14 August 2015:
Lack of publicity and indifference are . . .[restrict]said to explain the current slow pace of voter registration for the Amazigh Supreme Council elections at the end of the month.
With just 48 hours to go before the seven-day enrolment of voters is due to finish, for instance only five percent of the 20,000 eligible voters in Zuwara have registered.
A volunteer election worker in Zuwara, Yousef Ftess told the Libya Herald that the first two days had seen a low response: “We just lacked good publicity”, he said, “But the numbers are increasing fast and I am certain that the majority of voters will turn up”.
However Aziza Aledresse, a 43 year-old mother of five told this newspaper that she was not going to register because she was “tired of choosing failures and feeling disappointed. Even if I did register because of pressure from my children, I will not vote for anyone because I simply don’t trust them”.
The seven-day exercise began on Sunday in Zuwara, Nalut, Garigan, Kabaw, Yefren, Al-Qala, Rahibat, Wazin, Tamzin and Jadu.
The elections to the 26-member council will take place on Sunday, 30 August, with polling stations open from 8am to 8pm.
There will be three members from each town, apart from Tamzin and Garigan which will have one each because their population is small and not everyone speaks Tamazight, the language of the Amazigh.
Of the three members, one has to be a municipal councillor from each town, chosen by the other councillors, while the other two will be elected by direct suffrage. One has to be male, the other a female. The Council will have a two-year mandate and be based in Tripoli.
It is the first time that there have been elections to the council, set up in January 2013. They were called last month by the ASC president. There have been complaints among Libya’s large Amazigh community that the self-appointed organisation was not democratic and did not respond to public opinion.
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