By Libya Herald Staff.
Tripoli, 30 September 2013:
The process of electing new municipal councils to replace the existing local councils is firmly . . .[restrict]back on track. On Friday, Beida which hopes to be the first town to hold municipal elections, ended its extended registration of both voters and candidates, and yesterday, nearby Shahat, where the ruins of Cyrene are located, started its voter registration process.
According to the deputy leader of Shahat Local Council, 17 voter registration centres have been set up within the new municipal area, in places such as Qarnadah, Fandiya, Sousa and Shahat itself. Registration will take place for the next two weeks, he said.
Registration is also taking place in Ghat, Tazerbu and Bent Baya near Tragen.
In Beida, 22,849 residents registered as did 40 male candidates, six female candidates and three war wounded candidates. Under Government Regulation No. 130, towns with less than 250,000 inhabitants, such as Beida, will have seven councillors. Of these, five will be elected as individuals. The two others will be a woman and a revolutionary who fought and was wounded during the Revolution.
“It’s been s very successful”, said Otman Gajiji, the chairman of the Central Committee for Municipal Councils Elections (CCMCE), “The candiudates represent a good cross section of the local community”. He expects the Beida poll to take place at the end of October.
This past month had seen something of a hiatus in the programme to replace local councils with larger municipalities following the Prime Minister’s announcement at the end of August that some of the planned 99 would be resized and new boundaries drawn up. He gave as examples of places where boundaries would be redrawn as Beida, Benghazi, Tobruk and Derna.
Members of the local committees organising the municipal elections said they were confused as a result. Beida had been hoping to elect and a new municipal council as early as this month. Members of the committee were said to be “exasperated” by the announcement. “Everything is set to start,” one official said at the time. “We have given training and prepared agendas”.
In fact, elections in Beida would have been difficult this month because there voter registration there was initially slow. It was just 15 percent of what was expected at the end of August. Registration has been twice extended, until 4 September and then until last Friday.
On 12 September, an amendment was published to Law No. 180 on the Establishment of Municipalities, under which the Prime Minister reduced the number of municipalities from 99 to 90, renaming some of them in the process.
However, the boundaries of some local municipalities remain unknown, making it difficult to organise polls. That is why the elections are not all taking place on the same day, but as and when the local committees are ready to run them. The situation is further complicated by the fact that not all local committees are fully set up.
The registration process could not be easier, says Gajiji. All that potential voters need to be do is to send an SMS message to a national number – 11 7 11 – containing their National ID number followed by the local number for their registration centre.
Twenty-four hours later they can then go to the centre where they will be photographed. They will then be given their voting card with the photo attached. “The only reason for the 24-hour delay is that the local civil registry has to verify that people are registered within the municipality,” explains Gajiji.
Meanwhile, local civil society organisations are being encouraged to become involved in various stages of the elections – support, voter awareness, monitoring, even helping voters got to the polling stations on the day. CCMCE has been also preparing educational programmes to ensure public awareness about the process, and there are ongoing workshops for members the local committees.
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