By Anas Al-Faitouri

Notes on the Libyan political agreement 21/9/2015, which were taken after communication and consultation with experts in different fields.

1: Notes from a comprehensive standpoint:

• There are no clear mechanisms or active institutions to implement this agreement.
• There is not a legal or constitutional background for the agreement.
• There is not any party that holds all parties to a commitment except for Leon’s draft and the agenda behind him, which will strip Libya off its sovereignty. 
• There are not any institutions that the government can depend on to execute its security and civilian programs. 
• The problem of activation because there is nothing that can be done without it.
• Never talking about the Libyan army chiefs makes Khalifa Haftar and Al-Nadori legitimate. 
• Never mentioning the security situation in Benghazi like Sirte and Derna. 
• The reference of the agreement goes to Geneva group, in some of the points, so who are they?

2: Notes on the paragraphs, especially the introduction, the preamble, and the ruling principles:

• The Sharia point included in the draft is a trap because it has something to do with the decisions made by the parliament after the political agreement, depreciating the efforts exerted by Fatwa House as it reviewed all the laws and legislations. Moreover, this point is merely a legal one and does not take into account the social, political, and economic sides. Besides, there is not any clear mechanism that defines the way to implement this point within the decisions that will be made after the approval of the political agreement, knowing that the agreement itself does not follow the rules of Sharia, which means that it is a paragraph similar to those in the Arab constitutions that aim at giving legitimacy only.

• The draft turned a blind eye at the coup led by Haftar, and it did not mention the political process that resulted from February Committee that is based on “no for extension” campaign, which was criticized by the previous UN mission, worse yet, the new draft has nullified the ruling of the Supreme Court, which in turn has invalidated the February Committee track.

• The draft stresses on supporting the democratic track and respect the results of the HoR elections. In another paragraph, the draft asserts that the constitutional declaration should be held on to and that there should be respect for the Libyan judiciary rulings and respect for its dependency without stating or implying the Supreme Court ruling. Whereas, the draft affirms the commitment to announcing the results of the HoR in “respect for the democratic track” paragraph.

• The draft concentrates on “terrorism” and makes it a priority of the political agreement and of the national unity government as well as of the security measures in many paragraphs, which will consider all of the vandalism and destruction that were done by the so-called Libyan army will be put in “a war on terrorism” frame. Consequently, this will help regard those acts as official army ones and then consider any resistance to it a crime, whether by revolutionaries or others, which of course will regard all the resistance attempts against the coup as “terrorist acts”.

• Talking about the Libyan army and reactivating it or fixing it raises a hazardous thought as if the draft considers that there exist a Libyan army and can be fixed without considering the revolution. In addition, the draft includes the insertion of the so-called Tribes Army brigades and Haftar under the name of Libyan army giving it a legal legitimacy by the draft agreement.

• The revolutionaries were only mentioned in terms of inclusion as if there is a suitable entity that can include some of the revolutionaries or transform them to the civil work.

• Criminalizing coups is only superficial in the draft as there are no clear guarantees that can prevent them or punishing their plotters and hold them as political crimes. Moreover, this was requested by a member of the General National Congress to achieve a political victory but he understood mistakenly as coup and oppression was only linked to the 1969 coup, knowing that the drat did not mention the coup attempts on the GNC that took place before and after “no for extension” campaign.

• Activating the security institutions implies cancelling all the legislations issued by the GNC attempting to re-frame those security institutions because this activation will exceed the demands of the revolution that call for ending the era of security and military crackdown that Libyans faced before and after the revolution. The HoR, however, did not reject Haftar’s decisions in the east as he suggested the return of all security leaderships who include some involved in crimes before and after the revolution.

• The draft does not account for the violations of Ali Zaidan government and the issues and cases given to the Attorney General’s Office, yet it did not account for how it will prevent repetition of Zaidan’s scenario.

3: Results of the political agreement on the political level:

• the government is a product of two agendas; one gasps for corruption and the second wants to fight the so-called “terrorism”.

• The agreement was done between the west and a small political entity, which will lead to widening the gap and conflict due to the fight for plunders.

• The government has a wide variety of authorities and supported by foreign countries so we cannot punish it if it used force or didn't separate powers as the draft claimed.

• Concord is a vague term that cannot be repeated after agreement according to the conditions put in the draft, as the draft guarantees fighting terrorism and return of the security departments without referring to a clear mechanism to solve corruption in the development section clearly.

• Guarantees mean that there should be one Deputy from the GNC only as per an agreement put for the interest of foreign agenda that does not meet the aspirations of the faithful revolutionaries nor the coup resisters.

 

Disclaimer:  The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Libya Observer

 

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