By Abdullah Alkabir, political writer and commentator
The epic of the upcoming political process
UN envoy Hannah Tetteh has announced during her first briefing to the UN Security Council that the legal committee tasked by the United Nations with developing legal proposals and options to resolve the political crisis will complete its work before the end of this month. The mission will evaluate these options as the basis for the political process.
Tetteh did not reveal any details about this political process, its stages, or its stakeholders. This is likely to be presented first to the permanent members of the Security Council, and await their comments and demands to ensure their support when it begins implementation.
Despite this secrecy, after carefully listening to the briefing and the statements of the Council members, one can anticipate the steps the mission will take in the coming weeks and months.
The beginning will be to develop an urgent approach to halt the acceleration toward economic collapse by pushing the conflicting parties to agree on a unified budget and implementing a package of economic and financial reforms proposed by the Central Bank Governor to halt the decline in the value of the local currency against international currencies, provide liquidity to commercial banks, and halt withdrawals from the bank's international currency reserves to cover the deficit in government spending. The critical level of the crisis, the state of popular discontent, and the consensus in the Security Council on the need to unify the budget as a fundamental step to curb rampant spending.
In parallel, UNSMIL will begin inviting the parties to the conflict to send names of representatives to participate in a political dialogue that will examine the Legal Committee's proposals and select the appropriate ones to set arrangements and deadlines for the elections. Membership in the dialogue committee will not be limited to the parties to the conflict alone, but will include figures representing entities and regions not actively represented in the current government.
Taking into account the capabilities and experience of the political party controlling the House of Representatives' decisions, including obstruction, obfuscation, and procrastination, and thwarting all political solutions that do not meet its expectations, and its ability to completely control all authorities—especially since it possesses the Bouznika laws, which some parties have accepted and others have rejected—what is expected is a new version of the Tunis-Geneva dialogue, with minor differences.
Based on past experience, we should fear that everyone will agree to form a new executive authority under the same pretexts as before: unifying divided institutions, supervising the holding of elections, and managing state affairs. Then the elections are aborted, and the eternal Speaker of Parliament returns to his favorite game: obstructing the government's work, denying it a budget, then withdrawing confidence from it and forming a parallel government. This leaves the country in the same vicious circle, and the transitional phase continues with a resurgence of previous conflicts.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Libya Observer
