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By Libya Herald staff.
Tripoli, 13 November 2013:
Demonstrators in the oasis town of Al-Awjila, north of Jalu, today announced that they would . . .[restrict]boycott the elections for the Committee because the town will not have its own representative on the committee.
According to news agency Ajwaa Al-Bilad, the demonstrations were organised by the local council and civil society organisations.
The council leader, Mohamad Ali Mdouna, was reported saying that the town had been marginalised in last year’s elections to Congress and would not tolerate being treated so again. Demanding that oasis towns in the area have more than one member in the 60-member committee, he said that his town’s distinctive cultural identity had to be taken into account.
Awjila is in Cyrenaica which has been given the same 20 seats on the committee as Tripolitania, although the latter has a far larger population than the former.
The Amazigh community in the west of the country is also boycotting the elections because they claim the two seats set aside for them as an ethnic minority are insufficient. The exiled residents of Tawergha are also boycotting it because, they say, the authorities are ignoring their plight. [/restrict]
