By Khadija Ali.
Tripoli, 14 November:
As part of a four week program, the International Management Group will be holding workshops for . . .[restrict]Libyan parliamentarians, media professionals and civil society organizations. The first day of workshops was held on November 13th at the Waddan hotel and compromised of a morning segment for media and an evening session for civil society.
The program, funded by the EU, focuses on bringing in European parliamentarians and opening a platform between them and Libyans to benefit from their experiences. Parliamentarian Bob Bonwitt introduced the program as an opportunity to, ‘Let Libya see what happens everywhere else, especially in Europe.’
The workshop is in a Q&A format allowing for Libyans to seek advice and get a broader understanding of the roles they can play during the upcoming part of the transitional period. The first day of the series of workshops covered the constitution and hosted five European parliamentarians and around 15 representatives from civil society organizations from both Tripoli and Benghazi.
Civil society representatives were very keen on getting the parliamentarians’ viewpoints on the time frame allotted for the constitutional writing process and the role of civil society. The discussion surfaced different experiences; Thomas Markert spoke about the Polish experience of putting together both a short term and long term constitution hence possibly answering the need for stability and a longer-term constitutional process.
In the upcoming weeks the program is to cover a variety of topics running parallel with Libya’s political road-map such as the overseeing of the government, budget spending and law-making.
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