Tripoli, 22 April 2013:
A move to have Major-General Yousef Mangoush dismissed as Chief of Staff will not succeed say senior members of . . .[restrict]Congress.
It was reported yesterday by Al Watan TV that the Defence Committee of the General National Congress had recommended that Mangoush be removed. It said that the proposal would be submitted to the entire Congress to decide on Tuesday.
“We’re waiting for the issue to be brought to Congress for a vote” Khoms Congressman Abdulmonem Alyaser told the Libya Herald today. It could be on tomorrow’s agenda, he added.
However, Congress spokesman Omar Hemidan said that there had been no decision taken by the Defence Committee on the matter.
Congressman Ahmad Langhi from Benghazi agreed “It’s not true,” he stated. There was a strong group in Congress supporting the Chief of Staff that would ensure he remained in post, he added.
“The Congress is divided” on the issue, Alyaser said. “There are people trying to prevent it (the dismissal) from happening and who are looking for ways not to get it on the agenda. However, the pressure to have Mangoush dismissed, he said, was “getting stronger and stronger”.
Members of Congress opposed to him say that his name should have been included when the new government was voted into office at the end of October last year.
This is far from the first time that members of the Defence Committee have allegedly expressed disapproval of him or that it has been reported that Congress was about to vote on his fate.
The Defence Committee was reported two months ago to have recommended he be sacked. Congress was supposedly about to vote him out despite the fact that he is known to have the backing of the government and of Congress President Mohamed Magarief. In the event did not happen.
In Benghazi, in February, large numbers of demanded his removal, blaming him for the lack of security in the city.
Significant members of the armed forces in Benghazi and elsewhere in Cyrenaica are still opposed to him. It has been reported that on Sunday hundreds of officers, meeting in Brega and alleging that he was incompetent and too closely linked to the Qaddafi regime, gave the government 10 days to remove him. If not, they would quit the army.
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