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The United Nations-led Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF)
elected on 5 February a three-member Presidential Council (PC) and
a prime minister tasked with forming a government of national unity
leading the country to the December 2021 general election. The new
prime minister is Abdulhamid Dbaiba, a politician from Misrata with
strong business ties to the Turkish government through his
construction company. The new head of the PC is Mohamed Elmenfi,
who represents eastern Libya and is ideologically aligned with
Libya's Islamist factions. The first practical obstacle facing the
new executive will be forming a cabinet that can secure a
confidence vote from the eastern-based parliament, the House of
Representatives, by 26 February.
Significance
The four personalities elected have no strong power base and
played no role in the recent civil war; they were elected, not by
virtue of the support they attracted, but because delegates wanted
to ensure the defeat of their rivals. The new executive was elected
with a mechanism relying on majority voting, rather than consensus,
avoiding addressing issues such as who should lead a unified army;
as a result, the new unified government does not have a shared
political vision and will struggle to obtain cross-regional
recognition of its legitimacy. The elected personalities are now
likely to come under pressure from competing factions and militias
keen to have their economic interests secured, as well as from
those factions that failed to gain any representation in the
process.
IHS Markit assesses that the new executive is unlikely to be
able to forge an agreement to form a united command over Libya's
armed factions, with western armed groups unlikely to accept a
leading role for the commander of the eastern Libyan National Army
(LNA) Khalifa Haftar, while Haftar's supporters will press for him
to retain a leadership role. This institutional fragility will also
enable foreign powers involved in the civil war, notably Russia,
Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, to continue supporting their
respective local proxies and derail the process, should they
perceive their influence threatened by a new government. Deployment
of western armed militias towards Tripoli over the next few weeks
would indicate their intention to overturn the LPDF outcome,
increasing the risk of a resumption of small-scale fighting in the
Libyan capital.
Posted 23 February 2021 by Mr. Ludovico Carlino, Principal Analyst, Country Risk – Middle East and North Africa
