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By Umar Khan.
Tripoli, 6 June:
The election commission has received the final lists of the disqualified candidates from the integrity committee. More than . . .[restrict]130 candidates have been disqualified out of the total 4,000 candidates. The election commission will notify the candidates in the next two days.
According to the electoral law, the disqualified candidates will have three days to appeal against the disqualification. After receiving the verdicts of those appeals, the electoral commission will then revise the list of the candidates and will give three days to the parties to nominate the replacements.
After receiving the nominees for replacements, the electoral commission must issue the final candidates list in the next two days. If all of the above is carried out efficiently, the final lists should be ready by 15 June. The ballots will go into printing as soon as the final lists are prepared and according to a UN estimate, it will take a maximum of three weeks to print, ship and distribute the ballots.
According to a senior electoral commission official, the priority is to have the elections as soon as possible and to minimise delays. The election commission will not announce that the elections are to be delayed until they can be certain that the new date will not need to change.
A delay of around ten days is expected in some official circles, although sources agree that even this may be optimistic, and that a delay of two to three weeks is possible. Either way, all agree that the elections must take place before the onset of Ramadan at the latest, which is expected to begin on around 20 July.
The commission has said that it has trained more than 30,000 people to ensure that the whole elections process takes place efficiently and transparently.
The upcoming elections for the National Congress will be Libya’s first elections in over 40 years. The elected 200 members will replace the incumbent NTC and will be responsible both for appointing a new government and overseeing the drafting and implementation of a permanent constitution.
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