UN Libya dialogue faces new pushback
Libya’s UN backed structured dialogue is facing renewed institutional resistance after the High Council of State’s rapporteur accused the UN mission of interfering in a process meant to remain Libyan led, as reported by The Libya Observer and agencies on June 16th.
Belqasim Debriz said staff from the United Nations Support Mission in Libya had intervened in internal Libyan discussions during the ongoing dialogue, speaking to Al-Tanasuh TV, he claimed that some participants had called for adherence to Libya’s constitution but that a UN mission staff member rejected the proposal.
That accusation goes directly to the most sensitive question in Libya’s political process asking who has the authority to define the constitutional and electoral route out of the country’s long transition.
Debriz argued that it was unreasonable for a constitution drafted by an elected body to remain unused while the UN pursues what he described as externally driven parallel dialogues.
Some Governance Track members have already expressed reservations about both the management of the discussions and the final recommendations warning that certain proposals could affect national sovereignty and increase foreign influence over Libya’s constitutional and electoral files.
UNSMIL’s Governance Track recommendations had called for a unified executive authority, the unification of military and security institutions and a new roadmap leading to elections within an 18 to 24 month transitional period.
For the UN and its supporters those recommendations are intended to break Libya’s political deadlock and restore institutional legitimacy, also the European Union has backed the structured dialogue describing it as a reasonable Libyan led process.
The problem is that the process now risks being challenged by one of the institutions it needs to persuade, Debriz said the HCS had already rejected UNSMIL’s selection of four representatives on its behalf without its consent and that the council is expected to meet early next week to discuss the dialogue’s outcomes.
The UN roadmap may offer a framework for elections but without institutional buy in from Libya’s divided political bodies it risks becoming another externally supported plan caught inside the same legitimacy dispute it is meant to resolve.
The Libya Observer plus agencies, maghrebi.org
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