By George Grant.
Tripoli, 18 August:
Mohammed Magarief has been forced to retract a comment made during a recent television interview in which . . .[restrict]he said that Libya would adopt a Parliamentary system of government, in which the powers of the prime minister would be “absolute”.
“The governing system in Libya will be parliamentary and executive powers of the prime minister will be absolute, while the powers of the president will be honourary and sovereign”, Magarief said during an interview on the Al-Jazeera programme, ‘Without Borders’.
The remark has caused a small political furore given that decisions over the political model to be adopted by Libya are explicitly the responsibility of the 60-person Constituent Assembly, which has yet to be appointed.
In an official statement issued yesterday, Magarief retracted the comments, although he stopped short of giving a formal apology.
In an effort to distance itself from the controversy, Congress spokesman Mohammed Abdullah Addarrat, himself from Magarief’s National Front party, insisted that the speaker’s remarks were made in a personal capacity and did not reflect the views of the Congress as a whole.
The spokesman added, however, that public discussion of such issues enriched the overall debate about Libya’s political future and should not be prohibited. [/restrict]
