By Taziz Hasairi and Jamal Adel.
Tripoli, 16 March 2014:
Libya’s Amazigh and Tebu communities have reacted with scorn . . .[restrict]to Congress’ decision last Tuesday to accept the “Consensus Principle” which they insist has to be the basis for drawing up the constitution.
“It’s been five days now and we still haven’t received a final form of the approved draft, and I don’t know if we ever will,” National Tebu Assembly (NTA) chairman Adam Rami Karki told the Libya Herald today.
Congress members were, he claimed, “absurdly manipulative” and he had no faith in them. “We will never recognise a constitution that does not recognise our basic rights,” he warned.
The head of Amazigh Supreme Council (ASC), Ibrahim Makhlouf, was likewise dismissive. It was “completely unacceptable” that Congress had not spelled out what it was agreeing to in accepting the Consensus Principle, he said.
Last month, the Amazigh community shunned elections for the 60-member Constitutional Assembly because it was reserved just two seats, a proportion the ASC said was insultingly low compared to the Amazigh percentage of the population as a whole. The demand that the Tamazight language be given official status was also a factor in the boycott.
The ASC then said that the boycott would continue until the Libyan authorities approved fives points – the Consensus Principle. This is that at least two-thirds of the entire 60-member assembly including all six Amazigh, Tebu and Tuareg members would have to agree to the proposals in the draft constitution on the name of the state (e.g. State of Libya, Republic of Libya or whatever), its identity, flag, national anthem and language(s),
Additionally, any point in the draft constitution that relates to any one of the three ethnic minorities would have to have the approval of its two members.
The Tebu approved the principle shortly before the poll and joined the boycott.
On Tuesday, when Congress decided to dismiss Ali Zeidan as Prime Minister and to approve the February Committee’s proposals for a fresh legislature for its replacement (but not direct elections for a state president), it also quickly voted in favour of the Consensus Principle in a bid to address Amazigh and Tebu demands. However, it did not state what, in its view, the principle entailed.
Because nothing had been written down the Amazigh community rejected the law, Makhlouf said – and would continue to do so until such time as Congress explained what it meant. Its condescending attitude, he insisted, was an insult. It was mocking the Amazigh community.
Without a full legal explanation, there could be no progress on the matter of the Amazigh being represented on the 60-member assembly.
Congress had to spell out if full what it was accepting, Ayoob Sufyan, a member of ASC’s political committee, similarly said. The only formula it would accept was one that it had formulated, he declared.
The Tebus have concurred.
“Once we receive the final form of the approved draft on the Consensus Principle, we will make our final decision, but the consensus principle must be approved without any change, in precise clear-cut words accepting all the five terms that makes up the principle,” said Karki.
The Tuareg community does not have a single united organisation speaking for it. Unlike the Tebu and Amazigh communities which boycotted the assembly elections, one Tuareg member was elected in Ghadames. Blockades, violence and threats of violence in Obari and Murzuk also prevented not just Tebu and Tuareg candidates being elected there but general list ones, mostly Arab, as well.
The Amazigh and Tebu willingness to accept just two members each, providing the consensus principle is agreed in full, would seem a compromise although it is not clear how the members would be chosen. There are suggestions that Congress could pass a law enabling the ASC and the NTA to appoint two members each.
The advantage for both organisations is that they would thus become officially-recognised bodies.
How this could be done for the divided Tuareg community is less obvious.
There also remains the matter of selecting the other eight general list assembly members who were not elected last month – from Obari and Murzuk as well as from Derna, where Islamists stopped the polls.
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