By Sami Zaptia.
Tripoli, 15 November 2013:
At Sunday’s press conference, Prime Minister Ali Zeidan asked the Libyan public for “more patience”.
Responding to . . .[restrict]a media question as to how long he would continue to ask the Libyan public for patience, Zeidan insisted that he would still continue to ask the general public to exercise more patience.
Zeidan and his government, as well as the body that had selected them, the GNC, have been coming in for increased criticism from the general public as a result of their inability to achieve progress on a variety of issues.
On top of this list is the inability by the state to enforce security, create an army and police, control and breakup the armed militias, and most importantly from a financial point of view, relieve the various intermittent armed blockades on oil production and exports.
Moreover, last Sunday 9th November, the nationwide grassroots movement, the “9 November Movement” had unsuccessfully attempted to mobilize large demonstrations all over Libya in order to force the resignation of both the GNC and the Zeidan government.
The movement was responding to, and reflecting, the general frustration felt by the public with the authorities. As it happens, the fear of a power vacuum and the lack of clarity of what would replace the government and the GNC, as well as the exact mechanism for achieving it, led to the movement’s failure.
Hence, for the time being, the Ali Zeidan government and the GNC got a reprieve, at least until the next crises invokes the general public’s anger.
“The state was virtually destroyed and the Libyan people were greatly affected” by the revolution, Zeidan explained, in part justification for his government’s slow progress. “I ask them (the Libyan public) for more patience, because that is what god said”, he added.
Nevertheless, the PM pointed out that “patience does not mean that we should stop work and progress and development. It means we should understand the situation” that post-revolution Libya finds itself in.
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