By Umar Khan.
Tripoli, 25 April:
Hopes of keeping to the 5 May deadline for Tripoli . . .[restrict]Local Council elections are said to have all but vanished as a result of the voter registration process not starting in the third week of April as initially announced by the electoral high committee.
The chairman of the electoral high committee, Salah Adeen Tabagh, said on Tuesday that the committee was “facing some serious issues but it will all be sorted out before this coming Saturday”. Asked if the registration process would start the following day, he declined to comment.
However, Tabagh said that the team was working on the election website and it should be online soon. “The website is not ready yet, it’s under construction. However, we have a Facebook page through which we interact with the public. The electoral law was also published there.”
The electoral high committee was to hold elections by 10 May at the latest according to the initial announcement made by the deputy chairman of Tripoli local council, Hisham Krekshi, at a press conference on 11 March. A seven-member electoral committee was tasked to hold the elections within two months following the Misrata example.
The committee has faced growing criticism over the lack of representation of civil society organisations and is currently engaging in dialogue to increase the number of its members so as to include representatives from the NGOs and civil society bodies. [/restrict]
