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By Sami Zaptia.
London, 16 October 2020:
Mayors of municipalities in Libya’s Western Region and cities of Western/Nefusa region renewed their call for the need to speed up the holding of parliamentary elections on a constitutional basis. The call came during their meeting yesterday at the municipality of Tripoli.
It will be recalled that a similar group of mayors had first made the call for elections on 1 October. During the statement issued after that meeting, the mayors had expressed their lack of confidence in the current ongoing political talks.
They had also accused the current political elite of ”prolonging their stay in power” and ”mortgaging Libya’s sovereign decisions to outsiders”.
During yesterday’s meeting, which was attended by Presidential Council Deputy, Mohamed Ammari Zayed, and representatives of the Workers’ Union and civil society organizations, the mayors expressed their demand for elections based on the supreme interest of the country.
They also expressed their support for the head of the High National Election Commission (HNEC) declaration that Libyan parliamentary elections could be held within 120 days on a constitutional basis based on the existing 2011 Transitional Constitutional Declaration.
The Mayors stressed the importance of holding these elections no later than February 2021 and called on the internationally recognized Libyan government in Tripoli to provide the material support required to hold them on time.
The meeting also called on the UNSMIL to assume its full responsibilities towards the implementation of the elections by securing supportive international monitoring. They called for the next elected parliament to exercise its duties for a period of two years, which should be unrenewable under any pretext.
Among the priorities of the newly elected parliament’s sovereign duties would be the issue of constitutional entitlement and work to form an executive government away from quotas and work on unifying state institutions.
UNSMIL consults Libya’s Mayors as part of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum process
